It Jes' Happened
When Bill Traylor Started to Draw
by Don Tate
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Pub Date Apr 30 2012 | Archive Date Feb 03 2013
Description
Growing up as an enslaved boy on an Alabama cotton farm, Bill Traylor worked all day in the hot fields. When slavery ended, Bill's family stayed on the farm as sharecroppers. There Bill grew to manhood, raised his own family, and cared for the land and his animals.
By 1935 Bill was eighty-one and all alone on his farm. So he packed his bag and moved to Montgomery, the capital of Alabama. Lonely and poor, he wandered the busy downtown streets. But deep within himself Bill had a reservoir of memories of working and living on the land, and soon those memories blossomed into pictures. Bill began to draw people, places, and animals from his earlier life, as well as scenes of the city around him.
Today Bill Traylor is considered to be one of the most important self-taught American folk artists. Winner of Lee & Low's New Voices Award Honor, It Jes' Happened is a lively tribute to this man who has enriched the world with more than twelve hundred warm, energetic, and often humorous pictures.
Advance Praise
STARRED REVIEW, KIRKUS REVIEWS:
"Tate and Christie capture the spirit behind the work of Bill Traylor, 'one of the most important self-taught American folk artists of the twentieth century.' . . . Christie must feel himself a kindred spirit to Bill Traylor, his acrylic and gouache illustrations sharing Traylor's palette of rich color, whimsical humor and sense of play with the human form. In his debut as a picture-book author, Tate crafts prose that is clear and specific, the lively text sometimes surrounded by playful figures cavorting off the pages as Traylor draws them. . . . An important picture-book biography that lovingly introduces this 'outsider' artist to a new generation."
THE HORN BOOK:
"Christie's own flat primitive style is a perfect match for Traylor's story, and he deftly uses a second naive style to represent Traylor's own art. But the real artistry here is in Don Tate's finely crafted account of Traylor's first eighty years."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY:
"[A] thoughtful reflection on the nature of creative inspiration."
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781600602603 |
| PRICE | $17.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 32 |
