“There’s absolutely nothing you can’t talk to children about. They want to know the truth,” author and illustrator Maira Kalman says during a tour of her new exhibition “The Pursuit of Everything: Maira Kalman’s Books for Children,” on view at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst from November 10, 2019, to April 5, 2020. “You can say anything to kids if you like them.”
Kalman is the creator of 18 children’s books plus a dozen books for adults (including collaborations with Daniel Handler aka Lemony Snicket), covers for The New Yorker magazine (“New Yorkistan”), and pictorial essays for The New York Times. Her illustrated writings often feel like the sketchbook-diaries of some character out of a Wes Anderson film—debonair, full of witty asides, the epitome of a New Yorker. Inspirations range from things she picks up on her wanderings to Cecil Beaton’s photos of English mansions. Kalman revels in wandering and observation: “You don’t have to make anything up ever. Well, once in a while.”
Kalman resides in New York’s Greenwich Village. Her day, she says, begins: “First there’s the obituary reading from The New York Times with a cup of coffee. That really puts a spin on the day. … Then a walk in Central Park.” She works on her projects all day, she says. She reads. She watches British murder mysteries. “I go to bed very early. I hate the night.”
Kalman says she was shaped by “coming from Israel. Being an immigrant. Not becoming a citizen until I was in my 30s.” She was born in Israel in 1949, moved with her family to the United States as toddler, and grew up in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. She married the graphic designer Tibor Kalman in 1981 (he died in 1999 at age 49) and together they operated the advertising firm M&Co. (as in Maira).
Kalman’s daughter, Lulu, was born in 1983, followed by son, Alex, in 1985. Her first children’s book was published in 1985—“Stay Up Late,” working from David Byrne’s lyrics to the Talking Heads tune. This was followed by tales about an imaginary dog. “Max the dog is really my alter ego obviously. He is a poet dog who wanders around,” Kalman says. (Jane Bayard Curley, the curator of the exhibition, notes, “Her mother is terrified of dogs and trained Maira to be afraid of dogs.”)
“I wanted my work to be about wandering, journalism, being able to travel,” Kalman says. “It comes from a humanistic point of view. I’m not bitter. I’m sad.”
While many illustrators have opted to create digitally, Kalman continues to prefer working by hand, with gouache (opaque watercolors). “For me the relationship of the hand and the eye and the paper, the mistakes … that’s invaluable. I can’t imagine giving them up.”
Below are more things Kalman said during a public tour of her exhibition on Sunday, Nov. 10, 2019:
• “The most wonderful projects come from wandering and finding your way and one thing leads to another.”
• “Give me an assignment and let me tell you what I’ve seen. That’s my favorite thing to do.”
• About her “Misery Day Parade” cover for The New Yorker: “Why don’t we have parades that show how people really feel?” (Related: Pity Party and Saddest Parade on Earth.)
• “You can’t have humor without pathos.”
• “You can’t talk to kids about the world and make it [just] this ridiculous, funny place because that’s not the whole story.”
• About writing about Thomas Jefferson, slavery and his sexual relationship with the woman he enslaved, Sally Hemings, in her 2014 book “Thomas Jefferson, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Everything”: “You can’t tell that story and have that thing be left out of it. … But you can talk to kids about that very plainly. … We said the monumental man had monumental flaws.”
• “You can digress into a world of imagination and hopefulness and humor as you tell the story and that’s allowed.”
• While Max was an invention of her imagination, Kalman’s Pete stories were based on her real, actual dog. “I went from being entirely terrified to finding the love of my life,” Kalman says. “He started eating everything in site. … I started keeping lists. I thought I could make some money from this dog.” The result: “What Pete Ate from A-Z (Really!)” from 2001.
• About Max the dog’s hat, a wool felt hat that she found in a thrift store in Ashtabula, Ohio, and admired for its resemblance to the hat worn by Chico Marx: “It does look like a Marx Brothers hat and a lot of this is inspired by them.”
• “There’s a good reason to love dogs more than people because they don’t talk.”
• About Her 2002 book “Fireboat”: “It’s a book about a New York City fire boat that was built in 1932 and had been deaccessioned,” Kalman says. “They used to just tool around on the river and when 9/11 happened and all the water mains were buried … the John J. Harvey pumped water for four days and four nights.”
• “We live in the village and we saw the buildings come down.”
• “I like to wander around. I like to photograph and sketch and think about the vulnerability of people and the courage.”
• “If you don’t digress and go off the point, I think you miss the point.”
• Kalman was invited to write and draw for the website of The New York Times around 2007. “I was able to do a years worth of meandering. They said, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘I’m not sure.’ They said, ‘That sounds like a good idea.’” The first year of pieces was collected as her 2007 book “The Principles of Uncertainty.”
• “The thing I hate about any museum is when you’re obliged to learn something.”
• “I don’t know where that comes from,” Kalman says of the colors she favors. “Maybe the Mediterranean light.”
• “The way I deal with people is not from a cynical or sarcastic point of view,” Kalman says. “What I really want to say is we’re all in this together and I find you fantastically beautiful and interesting.”
• About her 2018 book “Cake,” with recipes by Barbara Scott-Goodman: “I said I’ll show them. I’ll give them the saddest stories ever written about a cake.”
• About her 2018 book “Bold & Brave,” written by U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York: “It was an incredible education about the women who fought for the vote in this country.” It gave her, Kalman says, “renewed faith in the power of people and the power of women.”
• “Things change and not always for the worse.”
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