SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Aesop's fable about the lion and the mouse goes like this. The lion spares the life of the mouse, and the mouse later rescues the lion. Children's book illustrator Jerry Pinkney gave this tale a lush and expansive life in 2009 and won the Caldecott Medal. Jerry Pinkney died in 2021, but as NPR's Andrew Limbong reports, his work for "The Lion And The Mouse" will now be preserved at a museum for picture book art.
ANDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: Children, for all of the sunshine and smiles they bring into this world, do not take the best care of books. This copy of "The Lion And The Mouse" that I got from the library for this piece - the cover's falling apart. There are pages ripped and taped back together. But that's the thing about picture books. To be read is to be loved and cherished - and, yeah, maybe scuffed up a bit - but to be archived and preserved is to be remembered.
ISABEL RUIZ CANO: I think this really helps honor and cement his legacy.
LIMBONG: Isabel Ruiz Cano is the assistant curator at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Mass., where they store and exhibit works by Eric Carle, of course, but also Arnold Lobel, William Steig and now Jerry Pinkney - specifically, the process artwork for "The Lion And The Mouse," along with its cover, which makes a bold choice.
RUIZ CANO: This cover image doesn't have any text at all. When you go see the book at the library, you only see the lion, and the lion is, you know, up close and personal. He's got this cascading, velvety mane. He's got this incredible luscious fur. He looks very humanlike.
LIMBONG: The entire story is told through Pinkney's illustrations. The only words you see are onomatopoeic - the squeaking of the mouse, the puttering of the hunter's vehicle. And the surface-level plot of the story is pretty straightforward, but the complicated feeling Pinkney communicates wordlessly is the vastness and fragility of the African Serengeti. Andrea Davis Pinkney, a trustee of the Eric Carle Museum and Jerry Pinkney's daughter-in-law, said Pinkney could relate to kids who felt small.
ANDREA DAVIS PINKNEY: Jerry Pinkney was the youngest boy of six children. And if you look at his process drawings for "The Lion And The Mouse," he really carefully illuminates how small the mouse is and how larger-than-life the lion is. And then, as the process drawings unfold, we really see that they become equal in many respects.
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JERRY PINKNEY: This is probably where it became most challenging, because I wanted them to be anthropomorphic...
LIMBONG: Pinkney talked about creating the book in this 2013 interview with the national literacy group Reading Rockets.
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PINKNEY: ...But in a way that suggested the true nature and the true character of the lion and the true nature and the true character of the mouse.
LIMBONG: Pinkney's solution was repetition - keep drawing them again and again. In the batch of artwork being preserved by the Carle Museum, curator Isabel Ruiz Cano says you can really see his progression with the mouse, from an almost photorealistic approach to a more personified one.
RUIZ CANO: I think he was really trying to capture the nature first and really familiarize himself with the characters, before he felt comfortable enough to manipulate them.
LIMBONG: There's going to be a big display of Pinkney's work at the Carle until early next year. But even if you can't make it there, you can see Pinkney's work anywhere you can find his books. Just don't be surprised if you find a copy that's a little, you know, well-loved.
Andrew Limbong, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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