A curious dualism.

I was just speaking to Lesley, who works in the children's library with me. Apparently there was an article about Tomi Ungerer in the New York Times a few weeks ago. He wrote and illustrated a bunch of children's books, which I knew, but I did not know that he also did erotic books. Interesting combination, no?

He illustrated Flat Stanley, which is a huge favorite of mine, in addition to writing and illustrating his own books. And erotica. There is an increased interest in his work now since the article (which is why there are a pile of his books sitting on one of our carts waiting to be shelved). However, I'm surprised that there aren't any "concerned parents" getting all huffy about the erotic books. Now, we don't have any of those sexy tomes in our library, but I'm sure there are some folks who would like to ban all his books in case there is anything subversive in them. It will be interesting to see how this develops (or if it develops at all), especially since a number of his children's books are being republished in the fall.

Check out the article. It's quite interesting and he seems like a cool guy. I love artists.

Also, if you do a Google image search for Tomi Ungerer, you can see some of his work (including some of the naughty bits).

Ex libris,

Marissa