Melissa Sweet

Melissa Sweet has illustrated over 100 books as well as toys, puzzles, and games. Her work has been in magazines, on greeting cards and as drawings on her living room walls. She has received numerous awards including two Caldecott Honors for A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams and The Right Word: Roget and his Thesaurus.

Melissa has written four books: Carmine: A Little More Red, a New York Times Best Illustrated Book; Tulepo Rides the Rails; Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade, a Sibert Award winner for Informational Books, and NCTE Orbis Pictus winner for Outstanding Nonfiction, and the Cook Prize for STEM picture book. Her most recent book, Some Writer! The Story of E.B. White was a New York Times Best Seller and garnered an NCTE Ornis Pictus Award and a Boston Globe Horn Book Honor for Nonfiction.

On her favorite books as a kid, Melissa says: “We grew up with Golden Books (available in grocery stores for twenty–five cents! ) including stories with illustrator Mary Blair’s luminous art, Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss, and the Little Bear series illustrated by Maurice Sendak. Though I’ve always been enamored with picture books, encyclopedias and New Yorker cartoons, I was not an avid reader as much as I liked looking at pictures.”

On her inspiration and artistic style: “I’ve always been a forager and collector of tiny weird things (desiccated amphibians, buttons, rusty bottle caps). But a number of years ago I was saving some unsuccessful watercolors that I cut up and used in another painting. From there, adding other collaged elements to my paintings gave the art a freshness, making it less precious and more fun to make. Often our eyes will go the collaged elements and that difference gives the piece some visual tension.

All of my work is done by hand. I’ve never mastered the computer for making art. The computer gives me too many choices and I’m always looking to narrow down the decisions. Working this way is slower, but it also allows for serendipity and being surprised by what’s happening in the process.”

On writing and illustrating about non-fiction topics: “The best part is the research. The poet Mary Oliver wrote, ‘the palace of knowledge is different from the palace of discovery…The world is not what I thought, but different and more! I have seen it with my own eyes!’ All the richness in the experience of reading, of holding primary source documents (like holding Roget’s original handwritten Thesaurus), traveling, doing interviews, gives me the clues as to the materials and ways I want to illuminate a person’s life or subject. It’s like piecing together a three-dimensional puzzle.

Every book is a challenge that compels me to grow artistically, ask questions, become more curious. I love the constraints of the book format. It enables me to push the boundaries of design.”

Related Exhibitions: Some Illustrator! Pictures by Melissa Sweet (2017)