March is National Reading Month, where the (somewhat cheesy) slogan “March into reading” decorates classrooms and is celebrated in libraries across the nation. National Reading Month encourages readers of all ages to crack open a book, although there is a large societal focus on teaching and motivating children to read. In Rhode Island, the Providence Athenaeum and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) have again joined forces to create a public celebration of books and reading with the RISD Illustration Stars event.
The event, which takes place on March 10th at 2:30 pm at the Providence Athenaeum, is a showcase and reading of RISD students’ picture books, written, illustrated, and bound as the capstone of a semester-long project.
The RISD course, called Picture and Word, was created by Professor Judy Sue Goodwin Sturges over a decade ago, and the class is often taught in conjunction with editors, publishers, or authors who are enmeshed in the publishing industry; this year, children’s book author April Jones Prince is helping to teach the course. Open to senior illustration majors, the course is Goodwin Sturges’ “boot camp” for learning how to create a children’s picture book (an illustrated book for kids ages 4-8, about 32-48 pages long per industry standards). “Every week they [the students] have a new manuscript due” related to a specific type of assignment or style of writing, Goodwin Sturges says, and there is always art to accompany the book idea.
Students are encouraged to find ideas from the world around them. Lindsey Shaw, children’s librarian at the Providence Athenaeum, helps students find children’s books to use as “mentor texts” which they use to conduct research about art, plot, text, and structure. But beyond published works, Prince notes that “Judy Sue is always asking them ‘What are you cooking?’ and ‘What are you watching?’” to prove that inspiration can come from anywhere.
For their final projects – and what they will be showcasing at the Athenaeum – students showcase their favorite manuscript via picture book “dummies,” a mock-up of what the final book would look like. In the final review for the class, professionals from the publishing industry, including a local children’s book publisher, Candlewick Press from Boston, review and critique the best of each student’s dummies. Candlewick may even ask for some of the work for consideration.
Many of the Picture and Word grads go on to become published authors and illustrators soon after graduation, and many of them are award-winning. Between 2015-2022, eight students have published their final projects from class – a list that doesn’t include the many other manuscripts published by these grads. Thank You, Omu! by Oge Mora was a final project from Picture and Word in 2016 (published 2018), and it won the Caldecott in 2019; The Truth About Dragons (published 2023) was not a final project, but it was illustrated by Hannah Cha from RISD (an alum of this course) and recently won the 2024 Caldecott. Two more final project books are forthcoming from last year’s class alumni.
At the Athenaeum, Shaw hopes that the children who come to the reading will be inspired to follow their creative passions. The students are still “young enough to be approachable” for kids, and “a lot of times little ones like to make their own books, and I thought it would be fun for them to see what you can do beyond paper and staples,” Shaw says. While these kids (and adults) may witness future Caldecott honorees in the making, the RISD students may very well be inspiring the next generation of authors and illustrators.
Attendees can expect to see “everything from fiction to nonfiction, goofy to serious. We have stories about mushrooms, we have stories about a sneeze,” Goodwin Sturges lists off. And of course, the art is all unique, from traditional styles to digital art and multimedia. Presented in front of a gaggle of curious and brutally honest children (just ask past RISD students, or Shaw), the RISD Stars event is the first big test to see if what the students have created are up to par with their readers; TheNew York Times reviews has nothing on a group of eager children.
