Why are we passionate about this genre? Picture books by natureare performances, and all participants have an essential role.There’s the author and illustrator (sometimes the same personplaying different parts). There are editors and designers working hard behind the scenes to make sure their efforts are invisible.There’s the reader and listener, maybe a parent encircling a child with the book on her lap, or a teacher holding a spread aloft.Then there’s the book itself, a still object that spurs the child toaction: pacing the page-turns, “reading” the pictures, voicing asoundtrack, acting out scenes, and especially, using the power of imagination to ll in the spaces.Picture books live on, in the physical world and in our psyche,ever ready to be performed again. And that is a joyful thing.
Strong roots. Stellar growth.
Candlewick launched its early lists with some of the most enduring of today’s picture books — from the placid
Can’t You Sleep, Little Bear?
(“the most perfect children’s book ever written or illustrated,”said the
Sunday Times
) to the playful Where’s Waldo? adventures, which headed straight into the pop-culture vernacular. The Maisyseries,
Library Lion,
and so many more favorites have been loved bygenerations of children, while the groundbreaking ’Ologies haveestablished a whole new genre. Candlewick picture books are soldin 64 countries around the globe, and
Guess How Much I Love You
hassold nearly a million copies in China since its release there in2005. Back in the U.S., the wry and mischievous
I Want My Hat Back
catapulted onto a#
¹
spot the
New York Times
bestseller list — and intothe hands of an especially devoted following.
Candlewick’s
We Believe in Picture Books
Campaign