Gold medalist Jennifer Yerkes below her winning artwork.

The Society of Illustrators gathered last week at its New York City townhouse to showcase the work of 125 artists chosen for “The Original Art,” its annual juried exhibition of original children’s book illustrations. Artists, designers, kid lit authors, and publishers alike were in attendance to toast the top award-winners—Jennifer Yerkes, Jon Klassen, and Simona Mulazzani—and to honor the careers of David Macaulay and the late Barbara Cooney. A jury chaired by illustrator Brian Floca—which included Jason Chin, Barbara McClintock, and Jeanette Winter—selected the artwork for this year’s exhibition from 500 entries, and chose the top awards. Jennifer Yerkes was named this year’s gold medalist for A Funny Little Bird (Sourcebooks, 2013), while the art of Jon Klassen in The Dark (Little Brown, 2013) and of Simona Mulazzani in I Wish I Had… (Eerdmans, 2013) received silver medals. In addition, Yuko Shimizu received the Founders Award, given to the best new children’s book artist, for her book, Barbed Wire Baseball (Abrams, 2013).

Jury chair Brian Floca addresses the crowd.

“As a reviewer of children’s books, for me the most challenging part of jurying the show was divorcing myself from the storytelling—looking at the art as an achievement unto itself, separate from its picture book mate, the text,” jury member Jennifer M. Brown tells School Library Journal. Among the artwork included in the exhibit were panels from Gene Luen Yang’s Boxers and Saints (First Second, 2013), Oliver Jeffers’ The Day the Crayons Quit (Penguin, 2013), and Sophie Blackwell’s Thee Mighty Lalouche (Schwartz & Wade, 2013).  “There were tons of fantastic entries this year…so many informative  and beautiful books for children,” illustrator Shadra Strickland, who also was a juror, tells SLJ.  “We are lucky to be in a field of truly talented and hard working people.” Unfortunately, David Macaulay was unable to attend the event. Barnaby Porter accepted the posthumous award for Barbara Cooney, his mother, who died in 2002. “The old lady is still doing it,” he told the crowd. Cooney, a two-time winner of the Caldecott Medal—for Chanticleer and the Fox (HarperCollins, 1959) and Ox-Cart Man (Viking, 1979)—has more than 100 books to her credit. The exhibition proudly displayed a quote from Cooney: “I go to great lengths to get authentic backgrounds for my illustrations.  I climbed Mount Olympus to see how things up there looked to Zeus.”

David Ezra Stein in front of his illustrations from Dinosaur Kisses (Candlewick, 2013).

On November 6, a special lecture to coincide with “The Original Art” exhibition will be held at the society’s townhouse. This year’s program is entitled Planes, Trains, Cars, and Boats: Illustrating Things That Move; it features artists Brian Floca, Wendell Minor, Nancy Carpenter, and Brian Biggs.

The “Original Art Exhibit” was first held in 1980 and moved to the Society of Illustrators in 1990. It will run until December 21, 2013, and then will travel around the country. Works from previous years’ exhibits are scheduled to appear at the South Dakota Art Museum in Brookings, SD; the Provo City Library in Provo, UT; and the William D. Cannon Art Gallery in Carlsbad, CA.