The reading I attended was for Rosemary Wells, a well-known children’s book author, which was held at the Iowa City Public Library. Rosemary Wells is most famous for writing and illustrating several books about her characters Max and Ruby, Stella, Yoko, Sophie, and many others. Over the span of her career, Wells has written approximately 136 books and has illustrated a majority of them herself. When describing her experience writing children’s books, Rosemary Wells claimed that she bases her stories off “heart and impishness” to reach the minds of children.
Since Rosemary Wells writes children’s books, the audience consisted of many young children and their parents, teachers, and artists. Teachers attended because many use Wells’ books in
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She shared her routines when creating new books and discussed the many techniques she uses to perfect the artwork in each story. First, Rosemary Wells described the process she goes through when starting a new book. She first writes the whole book up on her computer. When she has finished the story she prints and cuts out each sentence, decides how to split them up amongst the pages, then tapes the sentences down in a blank paper book. After this process is finished she adds a sketch to each page, changing it several times to perfect it. When discussing her artwork, Wells revealed that she is a perfectionist when it comes to her illustrations and creates many different sketches until she is satisfied. Rosemary Wells explained that she uses pastels on sandpaper in her illustrations because the combination of the two produces the most beautiful colors without any gaps in the coloring or smearing of the lines. She also uses food in her artwork as well to make patterns to stamp on her illustrations for texture. Wells explained that she places food items such as rice, cheerios, lentils, and even tapioca pudding onto a copy machine to produce a patterned image. She then has it made into a stamp and applies it to her drawings to give texture to a character’s skirt, a piece of furniture, or the background of an