Ashley Bryan

Ashley Bryan

Ashley Bryan by Sue Hill of Winters Work Gift Shop, Islesford, Maine, 2007

Ashley Bryan in 2007
Born (1923-07-13) July 13, 1923[1]
New York, New York, USA[1]
Occupation Writer, illustrator, college teacher
Nationality American
Ethnicity African American
Education Cooper Union School of Art. Advanced degrees : Columbia University, New York, University of Marseilles(Aix-en-Provence), University of Freiburg (Germany).
Alma mater Cooper Union school[1]
Genre children's picture books
Subject African American studies
Notable works
  • Dancing Granny
  • Beat the Story-Drum, Pum-Pum
  • Beautiful Blackbird
Notable awards Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal
2009
Virginia Hamilton Award
2012

Ashley F. Bryan (born July 13, 1923) is an American writer and illustrator of children's books. Most of his subjects are from the African American experience. He was U.S. nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2006[2] and he won the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for his contribution to American children's literature in 2009.[3]

Childhood

Bryan was born in Harlem and raised in the Bronx (both in New York City). His father worked as a printer of greeting cards and loved birds. Bryan once counted a hundred caged birds in his childhood home.[1][4] He grew up with six brothers and sisters and three cousins. Bryan recalls his childhood in New York during the 1930s as an idyllic time, full of art and music.[1] He learned to draw, paint, and play instruments at school from artists and musicians participating in the Work Projects Administration program.[4] With books he checked out of the library, Bryan made his own, temporary collection at home. He particularly enjoyed poetry, folktales, and fairy tales; stories that could be told within a brief span of pages.[5]

University studies and military service

Bryan attended the Cooper Union Art School, the only African-American student at that time to be awarded a scholarship. He had applied to other schools who had rejected him on the basis of race,[6] but Cooper Union administered its scholarships in a blind test: "You put your work in a tray, sculpture, drawing, painting, and it was judged. They never saw you. If you met the requirements, tuition was free, and it still is to this day," explained Bryan.[6]

At the age of nineteen, World War II interrupted his studies. He was drafted into the U.S. Army and assigned to serve as a porter in Europe.[6] He was so ill-suited to this work that his fellow soldiers often encouraged him to step aside and draw.[6] He always kept a sketch pad in his gas mask.[6]

1n 1946, he entered the graduate school Columbia University to study philosophy. He wanted to understand war.[6] After the war, Bryan received a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Europe.

Professor

Bryan taught art at Queen's College, Lafayette College, and Dartmouth College. He retired as emeritus professor of art at Dartmouth in the 1980s.[1]

Writer

Bryan was not published until he was forty years old.[6] In 1962, he was the first African American to publish a children's book as an author and illustrator.[6] "I never gave up. Many were more gifted than I but they gave up. They dropped out. What they faced out there in the world--they gave up."[6]

Retirement

In the late 1980s, when Bryan retired from Dartmouth, he moved to Maine. In addition to painting, writing and illustration he also enjoys making puppets, building stained glass windows from beach glass, creating papier-mâché, and making collages.[6] The Ashley Bryan Center, (a 501c3) was formed in 2013 to preserve, protect and care for Bryan's art, his collections, his books and to promote his legacy. Ashley Bryan Center, P.O. Box 263, Islesford, Maine 04646

Awards and honors

Bryan has received two American Library Association career literary awards for his "significant and lasting contributions", the 2009 Wilder Medal and the 2012 King–Hamilton Award. The Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal from the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) biennially recognizes one writer or illustrator of children's books published in the U.S. The committee named Dancing Granny, Beat the Story-Drum, Pum-Pum, and Beautiful Blackbird in particular and cited his "varied art forms".[3][7] The Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Award from the Ethnic & Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table (EMIERT) biennially recognizes one African-American writer or illustrator of children's or young-adult literature.[8][9] In 2005 the Atlanta literary festival was named for him[6] and he has also received the University of Southern Mississippi Medallion from the Fay B. Kaigler Children's Book Festival.

For his lifetime work as a children's illustrator, Bryan was U.S. nominee in 2006 for the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest recognition for creators of children's books.[2]

The Ashley Bryan Art series was established at the African American Research Library and Cultural Center of the Broward County Library in 2002. Dr.Henrietta M. Smith, Professor Emerita at the University of South Florida (USF) School of Information, worked with the Broward County Library to establish the children’s book author and illustrator art series named for Ashley Bryan. Mr. Smith was also the lector for the 2003 Alice G. Smith Lecture, a lecture series held at the USF School of Information "to honor the memory of its first director, Alice Gullen Smith, known for her work with youth and bibliotherapy."[10] In 2012 the Ashley Bryan Art series celebrated ten years of exhibits and programs.[11] "The series began with Ashley Bryan submitting eight original art pieces to the library to serve as core of the art collection."[11] It became "a children's book author and illustrator series which has brought Coretta Scott King-Award winning authors and illustrators whose work reflected African culture to the library".[11] "The Ashley Bryan Art series has had a long-lasting cultural effect upon the community bringing children and families into the library and engaging youth with children’s book art and illustrations."[11]

Awards for particular works

For particular books he has been honored several times including two Coretta Scott King Awards for illustration, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award from the Pennsylvania State University, the Lupine Award from the Maine Library Association, and the Golden Kite Award for nonfiction.

He was also a runner-up for seven of the annual Coretta Scott King Awards with one Honor Book as both writer and illustrator—Lion and the Ostrich Chicks and Other African Folk Tales in 1987—and five more as illustrator: I'm Going to Sing: Black American Spirituals in 1983, What a Morning! The Christmas Story in Black Spirituals in 1988, All Night, All Day: A Child's First Book of African American Spirituals in 1992, Ashley Bryan's ABC of African American Poetry in 1998, and Beautiful Blackbird in 2004.[9]

[12]

Selected works

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Ashley F. Bryan". Answers Corporation. 2009. Retrieved 2009-03-14.
  2. 1 2 "IBBY Announces the Winners of the Hans Christian Andersen Awards 2006". International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY). Press release 27 March 2006.
      "Hans Christian Andersen Awards". IBBY. Retrieved 2013-07-23.
  3. 1 2 "Welcome to the (Laura Ingalls) Wilder Award home page!". Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC). American Library Association (ALA). 2009. Archived from the original on 2010-02-01. Retrieved 2013-06-10.
  4. 1 2 Gold, Donna (Dec 1997 – Jan 1998). "Ashley Bryan's World". American Vision 12 (6): 31.
  5. ↑ Marcus, Leonard S. (2002). Ways of Telling: Conversations on the Art of the Picture Book. New York, NY: Dutton Children's Books. pp. 18–31. ISBN 0-525-46490-5.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Silver, Mary (April 4, 2009). "I Never Gave Up: Ashley Bryan's Autobiography Published". The Epoch Times (Atlanta: The Epoch Times). Retrieved 2009-04-11.
  7. ↑ "Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, Past winners". ALSC. ALA.
    "About the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award". ALSC. ALA. Retrieved 2013-03-10.
  8. ↑ "Ashley Bryan 2012 recipient of the Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement". Press release January 23, 2012. ALA. Retrieved 2012-07-05.
  9. 1 2 3 4 "Coretta Scott King Book Awards". ALA. Retrieved 2012-07-05.
  10. ↑ Smith, Alice Gullen. 1989. "Will the real bibliotherapist please stand up?." Journal of Youth Services in Libraries 2, 241-249.
  11. 1 2 3 4 Gómez, E. (2012). "Broward County Library Celebrates Ten Years of the Ashley Bryan Art Series". Children & Libraries 10 (1): 18–19.
  12. ↑ Simon and Schuster Publishers

External links

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