Happy 80th, George Ancona! (Writer/photographer, "Handtalk" series)

[Lenona]

Born in NYC, he now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The "Handtalk" series is co-authored by Remy Charlip and Mary Beth
Miller.

He's written about 60 books and illustrated well over 40 more by other
authors, including Barbara Brenner, Sue Alexander, Maxine B.
Rosenberg, Joan Anderson, and Shirley Climo.

http://seesaw.typepad.com/.a/6a00e54fabf0ec88330105365eb940970c-320wi
(cover of the first "Handtalk" book)

From an interview:

I started getting assignments from Vogue magazine, because I had done
a lot of pictures with my children, and that's what I showed. And they
had a magazine called "Vogue Children" at the time, and I fit right
in, and I started doing that.

Then a friend of mine was Freddy Brenner, who was a men's fashion
illustrator when we had worked at Esquire. His wife was Barbara
Brenner, who wrote children's books. And we were having lunch one day
at the house, and she said, "You know, I have an idea for a book, and
I think photographs might be better than illustrations. It's called
Faces." And she asked me would I like to try it.

I said, "Sure." So, I tried it, and I designed the book also. And we
presented it, and they loved it.

We did another book together, called Bodies. And then after that, the
editor said, "George, why don't you try writing a book?"

"Me? Write? I never went to college. I'm always a visual person."

And he said, "Well, you see, if you were to write the text, you would
get the other 50 percent of the royalty."

"Alright." So, I wrote, and I did a book called Monsters on Wheels.
They liked it. They published it and, voila, I'm an author.

http://www.georgeancona.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzvYyqxzwOo
(2008 interview)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6824305090004971270&ei=SokZS_H2N9SclAeJvaTcBw&q=%22george+ancona%22&hl=en#
(12-minute interview)

http://www.readingrockets.org/books/interviews/ancona/transcript
(same interview - in print)

http://www.goodreads.com/author/list/20296.George_Ancona
(partial booklist)

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=george+ancona&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=uYgZS7b6DMyg8AbW0snTAw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CCUQsAQwAw
(photos and covers)

He also did films for Sesame Street.

Lenona.

[Lenona]

Forgot to say, he also worked on a 1975 episode of Big Blue Marble -
"Switzerland, Tunisia, Yugoslavia, Iceland, California, Connecticut."