Clean Your Room, Harvey Moon! by Pat Cummings

Or maybe that rascally brother is just part of her: here’s me with Pat, unable to resist rabbit ears, after her talk. Books such as Jimmy Lee Did It and Clean Your Room, Harvey Moon were inspired by her little brother. She collaborated on Talking with Adventurers with her sister, who’s a scientist, and was also the model for the mother in one of her early books, Just Us Women by Jeannette Caines. Family is a big theme in her work, and her talk included not only stories from childhood, but recent conversations with her husband and mother. Pat structured her talk this way, too, talking about her first attempts at making art, and a ballerina and glitter obsession.

In her series of books, Talking with Artists, she asks creators for pictures of drawings or sculptures they did as children, as well as the work that brought them fame, so that children can see one starts at one place and ends up at another. You can visit her online at had the pleasure of hearing picture book author and illustrator Pat Cummings speak at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art on Saturday. In addition to her art for the Coretta Scott King Award winner My Mama Needs Me by Mildred Pitts Walter, Pat's luminous work includes Angel Baby Clean Your Room, Harvey Moon! and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winner Talking With Artists. She teaches children’s book illustration and writing at Parsons School of Design, the New School, and Pratt Institute. She has been writing and illustrating children's books since she graduated from Pratt Institute and is the author and/or illustrator of more than forty books. Pat Cummings was born in Chicago but grew up traveling with her military family all over the world. She was also the recipient of the Kerlan Award, which honored her entire body of work. She wrote more than sixty books, which were published in nearly thirty languages, and received two Newbery Honors (for Belling the Tiger and The Noonday Friends).

Mary Stolz (1920–2006) published her first book for young people in 1950 with Ursula Nordstrom and never looked back.

Clean Your Room, Harvey Moon! by Pat Cummings