Nancy Winslow Parker
I knew from the time I was in kindergarten that I would be an artist when I grew up. Between that early thought and today's reality, many worlds have been explored. In addition to the local school curriculum, I was given lessons in dance, horseback riding, tennis, swimming and acting, and I had ten years of piano lessons. But what I really wanted were lessons in art. My mother said that all artists were buried in the potter's field, and that was the end of that. From time to time, however, I was allowed to draw to my heart's content on shelf paper. There was plenty of it when spring cleaning required the changing of the paper in all the bureau drawers and kitchen cabinets. Circular stains from cold-cream jars, fly specks, and crinkly water marks were all worked into the background of drawings from my "shelf paper period".
Early reading was almost exclusively from National Geographic, The New York Sun, and Big Little Books. Ours was not a literary family. Other future authors might be reading classics by the fire, but I was swimming, sailing, tree climbing, playing "cops and robbers", "cowboys and Indians", games and cards, and listening to radio programs.
I went to Mills College in California - the oldest women's college west of the Rocky Mountains, founded in 1852. The buildings were Spanish style, the trees eucalyptus and palm, and the weather balmy. After New Jersey winters of slush, sleet, bare trees, radiators, and galoshes, Mills College seemed like paradise. In fact, it looked just like one of the pictures in National Geographic. I graduated as an art major. I also took lots of credits in English and told the creative-writing teacher that I wanted to write and illustrate children's books.
Back in New York City, and for twenty years, I slaved in the giant corporations of America. There is no aspect of publicity, sales promotion, or public relations that I do not know and understand. One day I said good-bye forever to filing cabinets, time clocks, desks, red tape, company politics, and windowless rooms, and I entered the world of children's books as an author and illustrator.
I like illustrating so much that I may spend an inordinate amount of time researching one item until it is perfect - such as the sarsaparilla bottles and labels in General Store. I like to write and rewrite and polish and edit unitl the sentence is perfect, too, as we learned in the seventh grade except I didn't know then what the teacher was talking about. If I ever forget how to write and illustrate books, I am eminently qualified to answer the phone at the United Nations or the American Museum of Natural History.
Message to Students:
I would direct children interested in fact rather than fiction to find a subject one is interested in, such as bears, Civil war, spiders, etc., and find the shelf in the library that has those books. Then read a lot of them. You will find that by the time you reach the sixth book on the subject, you know more than the author.
Tips on writing nonfiction: When using cards for notes, always put in the upper right-hand corner of the card the name of the book used, the author the library, and the location of the shelf, as well as the page number in the book. If you have to prove your source, or look it up again, you don't want to spend three days on the bus looking for the right library where the book is located (personal experience!)
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