Illustrator and author Ashley Bryan’s captivating look at his life and career feels intimate and immediate in a volume presented as if the reader were accompanying Bryan on a walk around the Maine Island where he lives. Bryan begins by discussing his childhood and early interest in art (“I cannot remember a time when I have not been drawing and painting”), but he covers many other subjects, from his education as an artist, including both informal and formal training, to the importance of family and community, and the changing communities of which he has been a part throughout his life. And of course he talks about some of the many extraordinary books that have defined his singular career. Inviting readers into his studio, he also offers a glimpse at some of the remarkable work he’s done outside the book arts, from puppets and toys made from other people’s cast-offs to panels of sea glass illustrating scenes from the Bible. This warm, visually dynamic volume will no doubt inspire many to partake of Bryan’s hospitality over and over again. (Age 9 and older)

Ashley's autobiography is full of art, photographs, and the poignant never-say-never tale of his rich life, a life that has always included drawing and painting. Even as a boy growing up during the Depression, he painted -- finding cast off objects to turn into books and kites and toy and art. Even as a solder in the segregated Army on the beaches of Normandy, he sketched -- keeping charcoal crayons and paper in his gasmask to draw with during lulls. Even as a talented, visionary art student who was accepted and then turned away from college upon arrival, the school telling Ashley that to give a scholarship to an African American student would be a waste, he painted -- continuing to create art when he could have been discouraged, continuing to polish his talents when his spirit should have been beaten. Ashley went on to become a Hans Christian Anderson Award nominee, a May Hill Arbuthnot lecturer, and a multiple Coretta Scott King award winner. As you might imagine, his story is powerful, bursting with his creative energy, and a testament to believing in oneself. It's a book every child in America should have access to and it does what the very best autobiographies do; it inspires!