It's a Party to Support ANC ~ Secret Garden Party

04.19.2011 UPDATE:
Photos from this year's Secret Garden Party is available for viewing on our Facebook page. Much thanks Lisa Black, Howard Watkins and Angelica Carpenter for capturing the Party moments!
                                                                                                                                 

Original Post:
Join us this Sunday, April 10, 2011, to show your support for the Arne Nixon Center and get your tickets to attend the Arne Nixon Center Advocates' 9^th Annual Secret Garden Party.

Individual tickets are available for $50/person. Underwriters packages are still available, too. Contact Kellie at kelliew@csufresno.edu or (559) 278-5790, to reserve tickets or sign-up as an underwriter.

Follow the link to ANC website for more information about the party!

Walter R. Brooks Exhibit

In honor of the Friends of Freddy fan club gathering in Fresno, the Arne Nixon Center will exhibit books and artifacts from the library of the late Walter R. Brooks, author of the Freddy the Pig series.Brooks wrote 25 Freddy books, which were published from 1927 to 1958. He also wrote some 200 short stories for adults, 20 of them featuring Ed the Talking Horse, whose adventures formed the basis of the kitsch classic TV show of the 1960s, “Mr. Ed.”

The exhibition includes two cases of books by Brooks and a third case showcasing books illustrated by Kurt Wiese, who provided pictures for all but the first Freddy book. Two pieces of original Freddy art are also included. Wiese became well-known for his illustrations in Felix Salten’s story of Bambi. He won two Caldecott Honor medals, one in 1946 for his book, You Can Write Chinese and another in 1949 for his book, Fish in the Air. He is also the illustrator of the picture book classic, The Story about Ping by Marjorie Flack.

Planning for 2011 Programs

Save the date, and please plan to come to one (or some, or all!) of our programs this year. We have collaborated with some wonderful people and organizations, on-campus and off-campus, to offer these great programs in 2011.
So, here is a quick run-down of all the programs and exhibitions that the Arne Nixon Center is planning for the first half of this year:

• February 3: Exclusive Film Screening
  Everyone is invited to see an exclusive Central Valley film screening of The Library of the Early Mind: A Grown-Up Look at the Art of Children's Literature, on Feb. 3 at the Henry Madden Library. This event is free for the public, but space is limited to the first 100 people. To see the trailer (and 'Like' it!) and get more info on the film, click here.
  
• February 10: A Child's Garden of Verses Recital
  The public is invited to a recital of Robert Louis Stevenson’s poems set to music and performed by pianist Hatem Nadim and Fresno State vocal students from the Voice Studio of Professor Emerita Helene Joseph-Weil. This event is free for the public, the recital will start at 12:30 pm at the Henry Madden Library. For more info, click here

Ashley Bryan Donates Art

     Artist/author Ashley Bryan has donated twelve pieces of original art from his famous picture books to the Arne Nixon Center for the Study of Children’s Literature, a department of the Henry Madden Library. The gift includes bright tempera paintings from The House with No Doors and The Story of the Three Kingdoms and watercolors from The Story of Lightning and Thunder and All Night, All Day. Pen and ink studies and paintings for The Dancing Granny show dancers in motion—their depiction so dynamic that they seem likely to shimmy right off the paper. The gift also includes a crayon pencil sketch from The Cat’s Purr, selected by the artist in honor of the Center’s Helen Monnette Amestoy Collection of Books on Cats.

    Ashley Bryan, who writes most of the books he illustrates, is the winner of three Coretta Scott King awards for illustration. In 2009 he won the American Library Association’s Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, a lifetime achievement award for substantial and lasting donations to children’s literature. In 2010 he won a Golden Kite Award from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators for the best non-fiction book of the year, for his amazing and unusual picture book autobiography Ashley Bryan: Words to My Life’s Song.