Good-bye, Jerry Pinkney

 Famed Black children's book illustrator Jerry Pinkney died yesterday of a heart attack, at age 81. He was prolific and precise and his illustrations, primarily in watercolor, were magical. Though he's probably best known for his wordless Caldecott-winning masterpiece The Lion and the Mouse, my favorites of his books were less well known.

Many years ago--I'm trying to remember--probably fifteen? around there--my children would have been eleven and eight?--anyway, Jerry Pinkney was the visiting author/illustrator at my children's small Catholic grade school. St. Anne's had a visiting author or illustrator come every year, and any child who'd read a certain number of books on the Virginia state book award list was invited to breakfast with the author/illustrator before school began. I'm assuming one or both of my kids was at the breakfast with Jerry; I know for sure I was. 

I remember his quiet dignity. I remember how he spoke directly to the children. I remember him saying, "There's something you might be interested to see," and pulling a sheaf of white paper out of his briefcase. The children clustered around. It was his preliminary sketches for the book Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. A mouse floated up to the sky on a leaf turned into a boat. Even in rough pencil sketches the art came alive.

Later that day, in one of his presentations, he showed a slide from the book Black Cowboy, Wild Horses, written by Julius Lester. The illustrations, as you might imagine, were absolutely packed with herds of horses, all caught in the middle of fluid motion. People who don't understand horses well often have trouble drawing them, but Jerry's illustrations were absolute perfection. Their realism and vivacity stunned me so much that I raised my hand. "How did you get those horses so right?" I asked him.

He told me that he watched videos of old Westerns, stopping the film frame after frame. "For each horse," he said, "I had to know where every hoof came from and where it would go next." That was of course the secret--to know how the motion began and ended, even while you were only capturing it in the middle. But it would have been so much work. Jerry shuddered. "I'll never draw horses again."

Jerry Pinkney was honored with the American Library Association's lifetime achievement award, the Children's Literature Legacy Award, in 2016, the year I won a Newbery Honor for The War That Saved My Life. The award dinner and speeches for the Newbery, Caldecott, and Legacy Awards finished around 10:30 at night; the honorees then stood in a receiving line for 3 hours. It was brilliant and fabulous and entirely overwhelming. Afterwards--one thirty in the morning--we all gathered for what has become one of my favorite photographs ever. Writers and illustrators are often terrible introverts but by that point we were all so exhausted that we were completely relaxed, laughing and leaning on each other.

I sat in the front row on a chair beside Jerry. His wife, author Gloria Jean Pinkney, who was wearing the most fabulous hat, came over to him. "Button your coat," she said. He waved her off. 

"Button your coat," she said. He waved her off again.

"Jerry," she said, "your belly's pooching out. Button that coat!" He buttoned it.

My friend author Carole Boston Weatherford phrased it best: rest in pictures, Jerry.