Ed Emberley

The Kids Are All Right.

- Eric White

FROM HIS HOME IN IPSWICH, Massachusetts and for nearly sixty years, Ed Emberley has been turning out books for children. At age 85, he is still restlessly creative, continuing to work in many styles that make him one of the most compelling and diversified living American illustrators. Whether masterful line drawings, woodcuts,print-based work, or digital illustration, Emberley has kept moving, too curious to settle into the comfort of one technique or style. His 1970 Ed Emberley’s Drawing Book of Animals and the series that followed would influence generations of young artists—and, most importantly, instill a confidence and joy that kept them drawing.

One of those artists was Eric White, who, while you’d never guess from his adult work, credits Emberley’s books as steady artistic guides through a turbulent part of childhood. White made the trip to Ipswich to meet Emberley on the eve of the first-ever career retrospective of the artist’s work, Kahbahblooom: The Art and Storytelling of Ed Emberley, which runs through April 9, 2017 at the Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts. The show features dozens of never-before-exhibited artworks from well-known Emberley books like the Caldecott honored One Wide River To Cross, and Caldecott winner Drummer Hoff, his seminal Drawing Book series, as well as long out-of-print cult classics Suppose You Met a Witch, Wizard of Op, Cock-a-Doodle-Doo and many others. White interviewed Ed Emberley in the company of his wife Barbara Emberley, their daughter Rebecca Emberley and myself, the lucky curator of Kahbahblooom. —Caleb Neelon