Caldecott Medal-winning children’s book illustrator Ed Emberley visited Malden last night to celebrate the debut of a new mural inspired by his 1970 “Drawing Book of Animals.”
“The fact that I was born in Malden and that I breathed my first oxygen as a human being alive in Malden, there’s obviously something in the oxygen in Malden that makes famous artists,” Emberley joked.
Emberley was born in Malden on Oct. 19, 1931, but his family moved to Cambridge when he was just a toddler, so he did most of his growing up there. He studied at Massachusetts School of Art (now Massachusetts College of Art and Design) in Boston and Rhode Island School of Design in Providence—with a two-year stint in between digging ditches and painting signs in New Jersey and New York state as a member of the U.S. Army just as the Korean War was coming to a close. Then he settled in Ipswich with his wife Barbara and budding family in 1962. There he became a celebrated children’s book illustrator. (Learn all about Emberley in this 2015 profile I wrote about him.)
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The 1967 book “Drummer Hoff,” authored by Barbara and illustrated by Ed, won the Caldecott. He followed that with “Ed Emberley’s Drawing Book of Animals” in 1970 and his 1992 hit “Go Away, Big Green Monster.” Emberley has been wildly prolific, so there were numerous books in between.
Creation of “The Wonderful World of Ed Amberley” mural in Malden was organized by the local independent group Malden Arts. Naomi Kahn composed the design based on the 1970 drawing book, which kicked off his influential series of how-to-draw tomes. Malden high school students painted the mural indoors, following lines projected from Emberley’s drawings. (“I’m glad I didn’t have to do it,” Emberley jokes.) Then the panels were the installed onto the back of a parking garage facing Malden’s David R. FitzGerald park on Exchange Street.
“I’m super honored,” Emberley says. “The whole point of the drawing books was to get other people drawing.”
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