IN BOOKS, PINKNEY DRAWS YOUR ATTENTION

Growing up in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, award-winning illustrator Jerry Pinkney didn't have a lot of opportunities. In America in the 1940s and '50s, African-Americans were not considered the equal of whites, and the races were kept separate.

Pinkney lived on an all-black street in the middle of a white neighborhood, and he attended an all-black elementary school. His father was a carpenter and his mother a homemaker. He was one of six children.

His interest in art and drawings came as a surprise to everyone.

"There were no other artists in the family or in the neighborhood. (I was) growing up in an atmosphere where people were not as much aware of art or artists or the potential of making a living doing art," he explained in a recent telephone interview.

He said the people around him were fascinated by his interest in drawing, "but they weren't sure where it would fit in terms of growing up and becoming an adult."

At age 11, he began to realize his potential as an artist. He had a newspaper stand in Philadelphia, where he would sit and make sketches in his spare time.

"I met John Liney, the cartoonist of Little Henry at the time. He saw me drawing and invited me up to his studio.

"He shared with me art materials, but most of all the possibility of making drawings for a living. That was very significant in terms of me (seeing the) potential of being able to do the same thing."

Pinkney attended the Philadelphia Museum College of Art and studied graphic design because "it had the possibilities of a job, unlike free-lance and children's book illustrators, where you really don't have a salary to depend on."

After college, Pinkney worked for a greeting card company and an art studio, where he discovered that illustrating was what he loved the most.

In 1964, at the age of 25, he illustrated his first book, The Adventures of Spider: West African Folk Tales by Joyce Cooper Arkhurst.

It was a wonderful experience seeing his illustrations in print for the first time. "To receive a package in the mail and you open it and see a book that you've illustrated, and no one else has touched it, it's quite a wonderful feeling."

But his feelings were mixed.

"And then you see all the things that you wish you could redo."

His first book was published at the time of the civil rights movement, and he believes the movement helped his career.

"Publishers who were publishing stories about African-Americans and Africans went to black illustrators to illustrate the stories," he explained.

Pinkney got off to a good start, and now his list of accomplishments is long. He has illustrated more than 75 children's books and 25 adult books. He is the only illustrator to have won three Coretta Scott King awards and has won the Caldecott Honor Medal three times.

His greatest accomplishment, he feels, is his family. He has collaborated with his wife, Gloria Jean, on several books, and all of their four children are in the arts.

"I think the inspiration really came from the fact that I worked at home for most of my career, so that the children always saw me working, and in some sense they could feel that I enjoyed my work," Pinkney explained.

"We supplied them with a lot of materials, and they always had workrooms and places where they could paint, draw or build things."

He is modest about his accomplishments. "I don't think of myself as famous. I think of myself as well-known, especially in the publishing community and certainly to a great many schoolchildren."

EDITED BY: Lisa Schubert, 15.