Kevin Henkes: Illustrator of the month, November
Transcript of Kevin Henkes: Illustrator of the month, November
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Illustrator of the MonthKevin Henkes!
Birthday: November 27, 1960
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Kevin Henkes also writes novels.
!He has twice won a
Newbery Honor. !
Find these novels in our library’s Fiction section.
F!HEN
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Our library has 35 different titles written and
illustrated by Kevin Henkes.
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Find Kevin’s picture books
in the Easy Section.
Here are some of those books that are
available in our library.
Kitten’s First Full Moon won the Caldecott
Medal.
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Q: How did you come to use mice as the characters in so many of your books?! Did you consider other animals as well?!
A: My early books have realistically rendered humans as the protagonists. As my stories became more humorous, I thought that I could better match my texts by drawing more loosely and using animals as my main characters. Bailey Goes
Camping was my first book in which I did this; Bailey and his family are rabbits. For my next book, A Weekend with Wendell, I chose to use animals again, but I wanted to draw something other than rabbits. I made sketches—a dog, a cat, an elephant, and
a mouse. I liked the mouse sketch, and so, Wendell was a mouse. I enjoyed doing that book so much, I continued to use mice as the protagonists in many of my picture
books. I have no particular affinity for mice, nor was using them repeatedly in my books something I planned to do. It just happened.
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Q: What comes first—the words or the pictures?!
!A: The words always come first for me.
I try to perfect them before I draw anything. However, I do think about the
pictures while I write. I work on my stories in long-hand on
lined notebook paper. I’ll rewrite several times before I type a nice, neat
copy on my typewriter.