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Author Interviews
copyright ©Teaching K-8
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The Strange Journey of Allen Say
by Becky Rodia, Senior Editor
From living alone at age 12 to winning a 1994 Caldecott Medal for Grandfather's Journey,
this artist and writer has done it all.
Are you going to torture me?" Allen Say asked sardonically as we
seated ourselves to begin this interview. We assured him that the
experience would be painless. As painless - and even, we dare say,
enjoyable - as the interview was, however, Allen Say prefers his
craft to all other forms of activity.
"The only time I'm really happy, intensely alive, is when I'm
painting," he told us. "I used to paint 14 hours a day, but I don't
have that energy level any more. A project that used to take four
months would take me two years now. I paint five or six hours a
day, and then I have to go see a masseur."
Between trips to his masseur, Allen Say writes and illustrates
picture books such as Home of the Brave, Tea With Milk, Tree of
Cranes, El Chino, Emma's Rug and the Caldecott Award-winning
Grandfather's Journey, and he's also published an autobiographical
novel, The Ink-Keepers Apprentice (all from Houghton Mifflin).
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Allen Say contemplates how to explain his
love for his craft - artist and writer.
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Learning from a master. Allen came to children's books in a
roundabout way. As a child in Japan, he apprenticed himself to a
prominent cartoonist - a man he refers to as "my master" with a
tone of directness and respect for which there is no Western
parallel – and began learning how to draw. His family set him up in
an apartment of his own, regularly provided him with money and
thus he began running his own life, all at the age of 12.
"I could do anything I wanted as long as I kept my grades up,
which was a hard thing to do," Allen remembered. "I went to seven
different grade schools, and I was just the worst student. But
those four years of living on my own were the happiest years of my
life."
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One of Allen Say's paintings from Home
of the Brave (2002, Houghton Mifflin).
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