Imagination and Innovation: The Story of Weston Woods
At ALA Midwinter, my friends and I were fortunate enough to attend a special Scholastic event. Our goody bag contained a hardcover edition of Imagination and Innovation: The Story of Weston Woods. I was instantly transported back to childhood and memories of watching children’s picture books like The Snowy Day in animated format.
I found it to be a lovely story of Mort Schindel, whose vision created and sustained the Weston Woods Studio over time. It’s an affectionate portrayal, too, of authors, illustrators, and librarians throughout what many call the Golden Age of Children’s Literature.
Here are a few favorite moments … moments that, in many cases, helped me think about the kinds of optimal learning we can create for kids.
On commerce vs. art, Schindel says:
From [Robert McCloskey, frequent Weston Woods collaborator and author of Make Way for Ducklings], I learned the difference between art and commerce. Commerce, I came to realize, is usually an activity that’s motivated, shaped, and timed to the needs of the marketplace. Art is a self-generated activity, one that depends on the intuition and taste of the artist, where the product is finished when it is satisfying to its creator - not because a deadline has been imposed and time has expired.” (p. 56)
Lately, I’ve been even more painfully aware that education is rushing at a frenetic pace. Our students are hurriedly pushed from task to task, skill to skill. They’re not allowed the space to be an artist - just to meet the needs of the educational “marketplace.” And many educators aren’t sure that the marketplace needs are the real learning needs.
Schindel also dismissed Marshall McLuhan’s 1964 “the medium is the message” argument articulated in Understanding Media. Despite his role as someone who transformed books into other media, Schindel had this to say:
And advantage a book has over a film or a filmstrip is that these media are designed to go from beginning to end at a specified pace. But with a book you can go at your own pace. You can savor certain sentences or paragraphs … You can skip page if you like. A child can touch the picture the artist painted. He can look at the picture upside down if he wants. With a book, the reader is in complete control.
The book is the most personal and direct of all media of communication.
Amazing how this argument remains one we discuss today. So many folks take McLuhan’s position: that multimedia necessarily trumps text. But we lose sight of the very manipulability of a book; its ability to let the reader/viewer process at his or her own rate. We’ve all watched very young children flip quickly through a book, and, as they get older, pause to linger and discuss what they see and read. As budget tighten and the, “We don’t need libraries or librarians: we have the Internet” argument crops up, it’s good to be reminded that it’s about balance. We don’t have to throw away books; we can celebrate that we have both books and an amazing world of Web resources.
Finally, a Schindel quote that begins Chapter 10 states:
The highlights of my life have been innumerable. Hard to choose among them. But I think the real highlight is the persistent feeling that the best is yet to come.
This vision - that something new is around the corner, that we haven’t peaked yet - is something that my graduate students observed in Margaret Lincoln when she spoke at MAME on March 20. She epitomizes for them - and for me - someone whose career, like Schindel’s, has been built on great intelligence, rich partnerships, a sense of gratitude, and the feeling that the next adventure is around the corner. The students were so taken by Gigi that they asked if she could spare any time to speak to the class, and she did on Monday via Adobe Connect Pro, graciously taking their questions on everything from being a PhD in practice to library design.
May we all be like Schindel and Lincoln.
If you have a chance to snag a copy of this book, consider it as a springtime gift to yourself. �