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Happy (late) 90th, Ronni Solbert! (Illustrator: "The Pushcart War" by Jean Merrill)
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leno...@yahoo.com
Sep 8, 2015, 8:28:53 PM9/8/15
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Her birthday was yesterday.
She lives in Randolph, VT. Also known as Romaine G. Solbert.
As you can see, she worked with Jean Merrill 18 times!
I love "Shan's Lucky Knife"(1960), about a country boy who outwits a
city-slicker con artist, in particular. It takes place in Myanmar. (Of
course, in the book, the name is Burma.)
Merrill dedicated "The Superlative Horse: A Tale of Ancient China" to
Solbert.
http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&q=ronni+solbert+
(images of her work plus one photo and photos of Jean Merrill)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/iamthebestartist/4193989774
(photo of Solbert)
http://weadartists.org/artist/solbertr
(more about her work - it's not clear whether she took the photos or not)
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/search/?q=Jean+Merrill;t=author
(some book reviews; I was forced to search under Merrill's name instead, since Solbert is not always credited by Kirkus)
http://www.goodreads.com/author/list/296424.Ronni_Solbert
(reader reviews)
https://beta.prx.org/stories/43534
(audio interview with Merrill and Solbert, from 2010?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3moN2kKy09A
(slideshow of Merrill's 1967 "The Elephant Who Liked to Smash Small Cars")
http://www.vnews.com/home/13873888-95/a-story-of-might-and-right
(from last October, LONG article about the 50th anniversary of "The Pushcart War")
First third:
By Nicola Smith
Valley News Staff Writer
Saturday, October 11, 2014
In 1997, Jean Merrill, author of the classic children's book The Pushcart War , which told the fictional tale of a battle between New York City street vendors and big trucks, received a letter from Ela Bhatt, a representative of the Self-Employed Womens Association, or SEWA for short, in Ahmedabad, India.
Bhatt, who'd read The Pushcart War in translation, was taken by the book and admired its "sympathetic and positive attitude to street vendors." She wanted to turn it into a play that would portray Indian street vendors in an equally sympathetic light, rather than as the obstructive nuisances they were often accused of being. Of course, 33 years after its publication, it was natural for Bhat to inquire "whether the author Jean Merrill is still interested in the cause of street vendors?"
M errill certainly was. She granted permission for Bhatt to make her book into a play, which was subsequently performed twice in the Indian city of Bhopal. Merrill died in 2012 from cancer at age 89, but her collaborator and partner Ronni Solbert, who illustrated The Pushcart War , still has Bhatt's letter at their home in Randolph, and she pulled it out to show how far and wide the book's influence has ranged since it first came out.
"We would get funny, wonderful letters from teachers and kids," Solbert said.
But to her dismay, The Pushcart War , for reasons she doesn't understand, went out of print. Then an editor at the New York Review of Books contacted Solbert about reissuing it. ( NYRB will also reissue Merrill and Solbert's book The Elephant Who Liked to Smash Small Cars .)
Recently released to mark its 50th anniversary, The Pushcart War is a spirited, droll and gentle civics lesson on what can happen when people and communities organize to stop the inexorable Big Forces of the world that insist that in order to save the village you first must destroy it.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner, who was at one time interested in turning the book into a film, wrote in a blurb that "the book gave me a point of entrance -- my first, I imagine -- into the world of resistance to political and economic injustice and chicanery. It made opposition, even non-violent civil disobedience seem fun and right and necessary and heroic, and something even someone as powerless as a kid could and should undertake."
The book begins with the mowing down of a pushcart owned by Morris the Florist, who sells daffodils. The driver of the truck that upends Morris's cart is Albert P. Mack, who works for Mammoth Moving. This being New York, both men are quick to take umbrage, and even quicker to mouth off.
Move, says Mack; You move, says Morris. Morris doesn't; Mack gets angry and runs over the pushcart, sending Morris headfirst into a nearby pickle barrel and scattering bunches of daffodils onto the street.
The pushcart vendors band together to take on the Mammoth Moving trucks and devise a method to take the wind out of their sails, or in this case, the air out of their tires. As the trucks fall victim to the ingenious band of urban renegades with pea shooters, the streets become less crowded and less noisy, and safer and more pleasant for pedestrians. The moral of the story, though, is not only to fight for something you believe in, but also to...
(snip)
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-book-news/article/64135-the-pushcart-war-at-50.html
(more on the anniversary, from last September)
WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR:
Under name Ronni Solbert:
(Editor with Jean Merrill and illustrator) Issa, A Few Flies and I
(haiku), Pantheon, 1969.
(Author and illustrator) 32 Feet of Insides, Pantheon, 1970.
(Author and photographer) I Wrote My Name on the Wall, Brown, 1971.
The Song that Sings Itself, Bobbs-Merrill, 1972.
Illustrator under name Ronni Solbert:
Jean Merrill, Henry, the Hand-Painted Mouse, Coward, 1951.
Jean Merrill, The Woover, Coward, 1952.
Jean Merrill, Boxes, Coward, 1953.
Jean Merrill, The Tree House of Jimmy Domino, Oxford University Press,
1955.
Jean Merrill, The Travels of Marco, Knopf, 1956.
Henry Chafetz, The Lost Dream, Knopf, 1956.
Gwendolyn Brooks, Bronzeville Boys and Girls, Harper, 1957.
Elizabeth Johnson, The Little Knight, Little, Brown, 1957.
Jean Merrill, A Song for Gar, Whittlesey House, 1957.
Elizabeth Low, Mouse, Mouse, Go Out of My House, Little, Brown, 1958.
Henry Chafetz, The Legend of Befana, Houghton, 1958.
Audrey McKim, Andy and the Gopher, Little, Brown, 1959.
Aline Harvard, Run Away Home, Lothrop, 1959.
Jean Merrill and Eunice Holsaert, Outer Space, Henry Holt, 1959.
Kay Boyle, The Youngest Camel, Harper, 1959.
Jean Merrill, Blue's Broken Heart, Whittlesey House, 1960.
Jean Merrill, Shan's Lucky Knife, W. R. Scott, 1960.
Jean Merrill, Emily Emerson's Moon, Little, Brown, 1960.
Parvati Thampi, Geeta and the Village School, Doubleday, 1960.
Marion Garthwaite, Mario, Doubleday, 1960.
Elizabeth Johnson, The Three-in-One-Prince, Little, Brown, 1960.
Elizabeth Low, Snug in the Snow, Little, Brown, 1963.
Jean Merrill, The Superlative Horse, W. R. Scott, 1963.
Jean Merrill, High, Wide and Handsome, W. R. Scott, 1964.
Jean Merrill, The Pushcart War, W. R. Scott, 1964.
The Nile, Garrard, 1964.
Adele De Leeuw, Indonesian Legends and Folk Tales, Thomas Nelson, 1964.
Henry Chafetz, Thunderbird and Other Stories, Pantheon, 1965.
Mary Neville, Woody and Me, Pantheon, 1966.
Virginia Haviland, Favorite Fairy Tales Told in Sweden, Little, Brown, 1966.
Jean Merrill, The Elephant Who Liked to Smash Small Cars, Pantheon,
1967.
Jean Merrill, Red Riding, Pantheon, 1968.
Jean Merrill, The Black Sheep, Pantheon, 1969.
Jean Merrill, Mary, Come Running, McCall, 1970.
Giose Rimanelli and Paul Pinsleur, Pictures Make Poems, Pantheon, 1972.
Mary Ann Hoberman, Nuts to You and Nuts to Me, Knopf, 1974.
Salley Hovey Wriggins, White Monkey King, Pantheon, 1977.
Lenona.
She lives in Randolph, VT. Also known as Romaine G. Solbert.
As you can see, she worked with Jean Merrill 18 times!
I love "Shan's Lucky Knife"(1960), about a country boy who outwits a
city-slicker con artist, in particular. It takes place in Myanmar. (Of
course, in the book, the name is Burma.)
Merrill dedicated "The Superlative Horse: A Tale of Ancient China" to
Solbert.
http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&q=ronni+solbert+
(images of her work plus one photo and photos of Jean Merrill)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/iamthebestartist/4193989774
(photo of Solbert)
http://weadartists.org/artist/solbertr
(more about her work - it's not clear whether she took the photos or not)
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/search/?q=Jean+Merrill;t=author
(some book reviews; I was forced to search under Merrill's name instead, since Solbert is not always credited by Kirkus)
http://www.goodreads.com/author/list/296424.Ronni_Solbert
(reader reviews)
https://beta.prx.org/stories/43534
(audio interview with Merrill and Solbert, from 2010?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3moN2kKy09A
(slideshow of Merrill's 1967 "The Elephant Who Liked to Smash Small Cars")
http://www.vnews.com/home/13873888-95/a-story-of-might-and-right
(from last October, LONG article about the 50th anniversary of "The Pushcart War")
First third:
By Nicola Smith
Valley News Staff Writer
Saturday, October 11, 2014
In 1997, Jean Merrill, author of the classic children's book The Pushcart War , which told the fictional tale of a battle between New York City street vendors and big trucks, received a letter from Ela Bhatt, a representative of the Self-Employed Womens Association, or SEWA for short, in Ahmedabad, India.
Bhatt, who'd read The Pushcart War in translation, was taken by the book and admired its "sympathetic and positive attitude to street vendors." She wanted to turn it into a play that would portray Indian street vendors in an equally sympathetic light, rather than as the obstructive nuisances they were often accused of being. Of course, 33 years after its publication, it was natural for Bhat to inquire "whether the author Jean Merrill is still interested in the cause of street vendors?"
M errill certainly was. She granted permission for Bhatt to make her book into a play, which was subsequently performed twice in the Indian city of Bhopal. Merrill died in 2012 from cancer at age 89, but her collaborator and partner Ronni Solbert, who illustrated The Pushcart War , still has Bhatt's letter at their home in Randolph, and she pulled it out to show how far and wide the book's influence has ranged since it first came out.
"We would get funny, wonderful letters from teachers and kids," Solbert said.
But to her dismay, The Pushcart War , for reasons she doesn't understand, went out of print. Then an editor at the New York Review of Books contacted Solbert about reissuing it. ( NYRB will also reissue Merrill and Solbert's book The Elephant Who Liked to Smash Small Cars .)
Recently released to mark its 50th anniversary, The Pushcart War is a spirited, droll and gentle civics lesson on what can happen when people and communities organize to stop the inexorable Big Forces of the world that insist that in order to save the village you first must destroy it.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner, who was at one time interested in turning the book into a film, wrote in a blurb that "the book gave me a point of entrance -- my first, I imagine -- into the world of resistance to political and economic injustice and chicanery. It made opposition, even non-violent civil disobedience seem fun and right and necessary and heroic, and something even someone as powerless as a kid could and should undertake."
The book begins with the mowing down of a pushcart owned by Morris the Florist, who sells daffodils. The driver of the truck that upends Morris's cart is Albert P. Mack, who works for Mammoth Moving. This being New York, both men are quick to take umbrage, and even quicker to mouth off.
Move, says Mack; You move, says Morris. Morris doesn't; Mack gets angry and runs over the pushcart, sending Morris headfirst into a nearby pickle barrel and scattering bunches of daffodils onto the street.
The pushcart vendors band together to take on the Mammoth Moving trucks and devise a method to take the wind out of their sails, or in this case, the air out of their tires. As the trucks fall victim to the ingenious band of urban renegades with pea shooters, the streets become less crowded and less noisy, and safer and more pleasant for pedestrians. The moral of the story, though, is not only to fight for something you believe in, but also to...
(snip)
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-book-news/article/64135-the-pushcart-war-at-50.html
(more on the anniversary, from last September)
WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR:
Under name Ronni Solbert:
(Editor with Jean Merrill and illustrator) Issa, A Few Flies and I
(haiku), Pantheon, 1969.
(Author and illustrator) 32 Feet of Insides, Pantheon, 1970.
(Author and photographer) I Wrote My Name on the Wall, Brown, 1971.
The Song that Sings Itself, Bobbs-Merrill, 1972.
Illustrator under name Ronni Solbert:
Jean Merrill, Henry, the Hand-Painted Mouse, Coward, 1951.
Jean Merrill, The Woover, Coward, 1952.
Jean Merrill, Boxes, Coward, 1953.
Jean Merrill, The Tree House of Jimmy Domino, Oxford University Press,
1955.
Jean Merrill, The Travels of Marco, Knopf, 1956.
Henry Chafetz, The Lost Dream, Knopf, 1956.
Gwendolyn Brooks, Bronzeville Boys and Girls, Harper, 1957.
Elizabeth Johnson, The Little Knight, Little, Brown, 1957.
Jean Merrill, A Song for Gar, Whittlesey House, 1957.
Elizabeth Low, Mouse, Mouse, Go Out of My House, Little, Brown, 1958.
Henry Chafetz, The Legend of Befana, Houghton, 1958.
Audrey McKim, Andy and the Gopher, Little, Brown, 1959.
Aline Harvard, Run Away Home, Lothrop, 1959.
Jean Merrill and Eunice Holsaert, Outer Space, Henry Holt, 1959.
Kay Boyle, The Youngest Camel, Harper, 1959.
Jean Merrill, Blue's Broken Heart, Whittlesey House, 1960.
Jean Merrill, Shan's Lucky Knife, W. R. Scott, 1960.
Jean Merrill, Emily Emerson's Moon, Little, Brown, 1960.
Parvati Thampi, Geeta and the Village School, Doubleday, 1960.
Marion Garthwaite, Mario, Doubleday, 1960.
Elizabeth Johnson, The Three-in-One-Prince, Little, Brown, 1960.
Elizabeth Low, Snug in the Snow, Little, Brown, 1963.
Jean Merrill, The Superlative Horse, W. R. Scott, 1963.
Jean Merrill, High, Wide and Handsome, W. R. Scott, 1964.
Jean Merrill, The Pushcart War, W. R. Scott, 1964.
The Nile, Garrard, 1964.
Adele De Leeuw, Indonesian Legends and Folk Tales, Thomas Nelson, 1964.
Henry Chafetz, Thunderbird and Other Stories, Pantheon, 1965.
Mary Neville, Woody and Me, Pantheon, 1966.
Virginia Haviland, Favorite Fairy Tales Told in Sweden, Little, Brown, 1966.
Jean Merrill, The Elephant Who Liked to Smash Small Cars, Pantheon,
1967.
Jean Merrill, Red Riding, Pantheon, 1968.
Jean Merrill, The Black Sheep, Pantheon, 1969.
Jean Merrill, Mary, Come Running, McCall, 1970.
Giose Rimanelli and Paul Pinsleur, Pictures Make Poems, Pantheon, 1972.
Mary Ann Hoberman, Nuts to You and Nuts to Me, Knopf, 1974.
Salley Hovey Wriggins, White Monkey King, Pantheon, 1977.
Lenona.
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