Sitting on Top Of the World

After creating great kids' books for more than three decades, Mordicai Gerstein finally got what he deserved—the Caldecott Medal

By Anita Silvey -- School Library Journal, 5/1/2004

Mordicai Gerstein wondered if he was hallucinating when he received "the call," informing him that The Man Who Walked Between the Towers had won the Caldecott Medal. The news was simply too good to be true. After creating children's books for more than 30 years, Gerstein finally had nabbed the equivalent of an Oscar for illustration at the age of 68.

The Man Who Walked Between the Towers (Roaring Brook) tells the story of Philippe Petit, a daredevil aerialist who, in 1974, sneaked into the World Trade Center and strung a cable between its two towers. The following morning, Petit danced across the tightrope, suspended 1,340 feet above the street, as astonished New Yorkers held their breaths.

This isn't the first time, of course, that Gerstein has wowed people with his exquisite drawings. Over the years, the New York Times has selected three of his creations, Arnold of the Ducks (Harper, 1983), The Mountains of Tibet (Harper, 1987), and The Wild Boy (1998), as among the 10-best picture books of their respective years. And more recently, What Charlie Heard (2002, both Farrar/Frances Foster Books), a joyous look at the life of composer Charles Ives, was named a Parents' Choice Gold Award winner.

Growing up in Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley, Gerstein always wanted to be an artist. In fact, he says that he never thought he'd be anything else. As a young boy, Gerstein drew pictures to accompany his favorite books and stories. After high school, he studied at the Chouinard Art Institute, moving from Los Angeles to New York City, in the late 1950s, to continue painting. To make ends meet, he drew a weekly cartoon for the Village Voice and worked on animated films and commercials. In 1973, he decided to try something new—children's book illustration.

I interviewed Gerstein in his studio near Northampton, MA, shortly after the Caldecott announcement in mid-January. An avid bicyclist, he had just returned from a trip to Spain; as he cycled past olive groves filled with bulls, he thought of The Story of Ferdinand, Munro Leaf's tale of a bull who sits placidly under a tree. Gerstein's bicycle, which he rides every day, stood beside the studio door. In the studio, I found a human being of great intelligence, energy, and humility, with a sense of humor and perspective about his work.

Did the idea for The Man Who Walked Between the Towers come to you shortly after September 11, 2001?

Yes. Inspired by Philippe Petit's walk between the towers, I had been playing with a story about a boy who wants to ride a bicycle on a tightrope. But I hadn't been able to work it out. I'd always kept a 1987 New Yorker profile of Philippe Petit on my shelf, because he fascinated me. After September 11th, I began to write the story of Petit.

It wasn't as easy getting others excited about the book as I had hoped. The Man Who Walked Between the Towers was turned down by two houses. It dealt with sensitive issues. Some saw it as a story about breaking the law. I said to my agent Joan [Raines], "Put it away. I'm so tired of sending books around that nobody wants." But Joan took the manuscript to Simon Boughton [at Roaring Brook], who I had worked with years before at Crown, and he responded enthusiastically.

What did Simon actually look at—a book dummy containing art or just a manuscript?

I always create the story first, before I begin any art. I work as a writer; then I put the manuscript away and come back to the project as the illustrator. I read the text aloud as I am working on it, writing for voice. So at that point, Simon only had a manuscript to consider.

How did you do the visual research?

After the manuscript was finished and edited, I started to look for pictures of the event and the towers. I was fortunate because Philippe Petit had published his own marvelous book, To Reach the Clouds, with over 100 photographs. I doubt if I could have done The Man Who Walked Between the Towers without that book. I can make up things, of course, but I needed to know how the buildings looked when the event actually happened. After looking at some of his photographs, I did dozens of drawings, trying to get my own perspective and detail.

Then I fashioned a book dummy, to actual size. I created each spread separately, and then pasted them together. In my earlier books, I redrew and redrew, transferring drawings to tracing paper and then watercolor paper. Now I try to go as directly as possible to the final art, to keep the spontaneity. As I started to illustrate the text, the ideas for the foldouts occurred to me, and Simon said, "Go ahead." The dummy came out quite close to the final book.

In the dummy, for the page "He even lay down to rest," you have a cut-out figure of Philippe pasted on the page. Did you move it back and forth and play with the perspective?

That picture was very difficult. It went through many drawings, revisions, different angles. I had to keep altering the relationship between the bird and the man. I kept playing with the perspective of where the viewer was on the page.

But some of the book proved much easier. I loved the night scenes; they were really fun to do because I don't often get to work with the close values of the dark. I toned the pages in between a lighter blue, to extend that feeling of the night. There is a lot of color in the dark scenes.

On some pages—[the scenes for] "It took three hours…" and "Officers rushed to the roof"—I distorted the picture frames. I tried to twist that space, pull one edge toward the reader and the other edge away. I tried to stretch and open up the space.

How did you create the final art?

To finish the book, I redrew the pieces onto the paper. Illustrator William Steig, a hero of mine, could always improvise his drawings on the page. But I still have to redraw my work one more time.

Then I paint with oils on this very flexible paper, Opalux. I can erase on it and not scar the surface. I can build up colors in layers, such as the sky over the city. Often I work back into the oil paint with pen and colored pencils.

When I paint, I start on the first spread and move forward. I don't finish everything. I rough everything in, bring it to a point where it is coherent, and I move on. Then I go back and go through it again, and go back, and go back again. I sometimes say a picture book is like doing one picture in 32 panels. None of them are done until all of them are done and work together. The art for my books usually takes three or four months, but in this case, it came closer to six.

I like to do the cover last, after I have the full feeling of the book. We had talked about doing a jacket with no display type—no title or author's name. But then at the last minute we decided against that approach. But my original jacket was designed that way.

You've created children's books for more than three decades. How did you get started?

I met a young writer, Elizabeth Levy, who had an idea for a series of books featuring children as detectives, "Something Queer at…." She wanted someone to create drawings. I read the story, a picture book with second-grade vocabulary, and loved it. I did a few drawings, and she dropped the manuscript and art off at Delacorte. We got a call the next day, saying they would take the book. But telling my own stories took me another 10 years.

What were your early stories like?

The first books I tried to create were picture books without words. Alice Bregman of Delacorte gave me a lot of time and encouragement. She would look at the books and say basically, "Almost, but no cigar!" Then I started writing short childhood memories, one page long. I gained confidence and kept writing. Once I got beyond the point of my own memory, I found myself writing fiction.

I directed the first animated Berenstein Bears show, a Christmas show. Since I had made some money and was single, I took a year off, around 1981, and wrote full time. A tremendous number of manuscripts just poured out, and I decided this would be my new career. Then I tried to get the books published.

Did any of them eventually get published?

During that time I came across the story of the wild boy of Aveyron, and I did a picture book based on his experience. People liked it a lot, but they didn't know what to do with it. I couldn't sell the book, but I couldn't forget it either. Many years later, I found myself writing the novel Victor about the same subject. Frances Foster of Farrar took the novel, and when she did, I said, "You might be interested in seeing where it came from." I showed her the dummy for The Wild Boy. She sat down right then and read it through and said, "Well, we will publish this, too." She also said, "If I'd seen this 17 years ago, I would have published it then." The Wild Boy, which came out in 1998, looks almost exactly like the book I created in the early 1980s.

During this time, I also wrote early texts for Follow Me!, Sparrow Jack, and The Seal Mother. However, since I couldn't place The Wild Boy, I decided to do my own version of the concept by telling the saga of a boy raised by ducks. I lived in New York and attended the Bank Street writing group. The first book I read to them was Arnold of the Ducks, and I got a standing ovation. So when the book was turned down by six publishers, I wasn't as discouraged as I might have been.

How did you finally make your way into print?

I found an agent, Joan Raines; she, her husband, and son had a three-person agency. I'd been sending all my stories around and getting rejected. At that point, Joan connected with what I was doing. She has been my champion for over two decades. She always believed that I was going to make it as a creator of books.

Liz Gordon of HarperCollins became my first patron and editor. When she moved to Hyperion, she bought several of my books again. I know some people have only one editor. But my books are so different, one from another, that different editors responded to them. So Joan has taken my projects to different houses.

Certainly, you've received nice reviews throughout your career, but you might have felt underappreciated. Did you ever get discouraged?

In the mid-1990s, I spent a year trying to get back into animated films. I wasn't really making a living in children's books, and I had been a successful, award-winning animator. Everyone that I had worked with was gone, disappeared, died. I got the grandson of someone I used to work for. I felt like Rip Van Winkle. I took a storyboard test for Rugrats, but I never heard from them. I actually got excited about animation because I hadn't seen it for years. But I just couldn't get anywhere. Fortunately, I didn't get back into animation.

With books like The Wild Boy, What Charlie Heard, Sparrow Jack, and The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, you seem to have discovered your own voice. Did you create these books differently than the others?

With many of my books, like The Mountains of Tibet, I studied Tibetan art, and then I took on that stylistic persona. With The Seal Mother, it was like putting on an opera, designing costumes and sets. I enjoyed approaching each book in a different way. But The Wild Boy was so liberating, so direct, because it came from within me. So I began to work more that way, approaching things head on, finding the material internally.

The minute The Man Who Walked Between the Towers appeared, it received enthusiastic reviews. Did you start to think about the Caldecott?

The Caldecott, of course, was always a dream, but it seemed just that—a dream, not a possibility. Back in 1987, when The Mountains of Tibet came out, Jane Yolen organized a weekly writers and artists get-together in the old Bay State Hotel. Corinne Demos, Patty MacLachlan, journalists, children's book writers, and adult writers would show up; it was really marvelous. Jane, who was very generous about my work, kept saying to me, "Mordicai, I think you're going to win; there is a buzz about your book." On the day that the awards were announced, I called Jane, because Jane always knows everything that is happening. Jane said, "Mordicai, I am so embarrassed because my book with John Schoenherr, Owl Moon, just won." So I ran out and bought a dozen roses and a bottle of champagne and brought them to Jane. This year on the afternoon of the announcement, a dozen roses showed up at my door. They were from Jane.