Books

From the Author

Why I Wrote and Illustrated Wonderment

As a child, I remember learning how to draw a tree from my mother. I was five. We were at my Uncle Sidney and Aunt Sylvia’s home upstate, NY. It was a cottage-like house in the county, and to me, a child then living in the Bronx, it felt like the house of the seven dwarfs. Sidney was an artist of Blake-like visions. They were completely his own visions, but had that startling quality, spiritual energy, moments of satire. Of course, I did not know of Blake at five-years-old but came to love him and his works of poetry and illustration. Sidney wrote poetry too and filled notebooks with poems and philosophical investigations.

That afternoon his two sons, my two cousins, older than me, were showing off their creative talents, my dad and my mother also drew and painted in watercolor and colored pencils and they wrote as well. I felt so excited that day, seeing everyone’s work. I was out of the city, it was early spring, surrounded by nature, and I especially wanted to draw a tree. My mother sat me down with pad and pencil and showed me how. She explained how the branches came off the trunk like arteries and the smaller branches and twigs like veins. I was thrilled and got right to work. I was fascinated by the network of roads the branches made in the sky. I loved drawing trees. I still do.

By the time I was born, 1950, Dad was freelance. He had worked on staff writing comic book stories for Stan Lee and now wrote for Stan and his competitor, Dell Comics independently, as well as articles for magazines. Mom was secretly working on a novel. My childhood and my younger sister Rochelle’s had a bohemian quality to it. From an early age, I was torn between making art and writing, not knowing which path I wanted to focus on. I felt somehow, I had to choose.

There was a moment when the seed of this book took root in my mind. At fifteen, I spent the day at Uncle Sid’s with his family. They had moved back from their home in the woods to the Bronx. My uncle was working on illustrations for his own book of haiku poetry. I was deeply impressed by these sets of unity. The drawings were elegant, whimsical, and inked in black and white. I had the thought that one day I would love to illustrate my own book of poetry. By twelve I had written my first “serious” poem about a broken friendship and kept on going, reading all the poetry that would shape my own work. My uncle never finished that book.

Three years ago, I drafted a poem, thinking about a third book of poetry, but with its execution came a strong vision for an accompanying illustration. The poem is called The Birch Trees and the Fox. I saw a network of trees and shadows in the snow, and a lone fox transfixed at the bottom. I drew it. There in front of me sat the poem and its illustration. A perfect set. The book Wonderment was born. I am now holding it in my hands. That my publisher has published this book is another moment of wonderment. I hope it brings others pleasure and delight. It was an act of love creating it.

All my best,
Sherry