A Brief History of Michelangelo's David

Author Jane Sutcliffe

A month after Michelangelo's David was unveiled in September 1504, more work was ordered. David's sling and the tree stump behind his leg were covered in gold. Some experts say David himself wore a crown of gold leaves. And he was given a belt of copper leaves to cover his nakedness.

The people of Florence hoped that their David would always bring the city luck. But as it turned out, he wasn't in the luckiest of spots.

Once lightning struck the statue and damaged the base.

Another time someone threw a bench out of a window just above David's head. The bench hit David's left arm and smashed it into three pieces. A friend of Michelangelo's rescued the pieces. Later the statue was repared.

Then the giant faced a different kind of danger. Year after year of standing in the city square meant year after year of hot summers and cold winters. It meant year after year of rain and wind and dirt. And bird droppings

After a few centuries someone noticed that the statue was looking pretty dirty. Worse, the marble was pitted and damaged. David was being worn away. 

There was only one thing to do. The statue was cleaned and moved inside for safekeeping. Of course the people of Florence could not think of a city square without David. So a copy was made to stand in the same place.

Now David has been standing for more than five hundred years. He is safe and protected. The adornments are gone. People who come to see David today see him much as he must have looked when he left Michelangelo's hands.

From the Author's Note in Stone Giant: 
Michelangelo's David and How He Came to Be

Vinnie Ream and the Middle School Student: An Open Invitation

The first time I saw a photograph of Vinnie Ream, I was taken by her intelligent eyes, lively expression, and the abundance of chestnut colored curls cascading down her shoulders. Barely five-feet tall, she stood next to a clay bust she had sculpted of Abraham Lincoln. It invited further investigation, and only after I'd read of her feisty personality and the battle she waged to sculpt Lincoln during a time when no American woman dared to proclaim herself a working artist, much less a sculptor of presidents, did I completely fall in love with her story, determined to bring it to life in a children's picture book biography.

It's a similar process for my own students, minus the president, the diminutive stature, and the hair, of course, but the goal is the same--draw them in! From the moment my 8th graders cross the threshold of my classroom, I'm hoping to entice them with an explosion of color, opening their eyes to all that room 228 has to offer by coaxing them to look closer, maybe even fall in love with one of the hundreds of books lining the shelves, or the writing journals they'll use to explore the essential questions about literature in connection with their own lives.


"If you lie down to rest on the green grass, watch the sunlight glisten and the leaves glow; coax the birds to come and sing to you . . . Watch the ants toil and take from their patience. Watch the spider weave its web and take lessons from its skills. Listen to the thousands of voices and hear how busy nature is. She does not lose a moment. She does not tire. Why should we?"
--Vinnie Ream

"She for real?" a student asked after listening to Vinnie's opening quote from Vinnie and Abraham. A teenager's world is the antithesis of solitary contemplation. From texting friends, downloading music, and updating tweets, to middle school relationships realigning with Kim Kardashian speed, fast is what middle schoolers do best.

Persuading them to slow down long enough to read, contemplate and write, much less re-write, is a teacher's greatest challenge. In the language arts classroom, providing students the opportunity for choice through reading and writing workshop helps foster a sense of autonomy and purpose. At Orange City Schools, they embrace the idea that young adult literature has rigor and relevance, and back this philosophy with financial as well as educational support in the form of teacher training workshops, Junior Library Guild subscriptions, book fairs, extensive classroom and school libraries.

An additional way to connect with students and embody Vinnie Ream's philosophy of passionate persistence is through sharing my own struggles as a writer. Nothing cheers teenagers more than hearing that their teacher has been "dumped" (hundreds of times!) through rejection letters that I've received from publishers. Better still are the editors' red-penciled criticisms containing corrections and suggestions for improving my writing.

After Lincoln was assassinated and Vinnie beat out all the renowned male sculptors of the day, winning the commission to create the life-sized statue of Lincoln, she invited the public into her artist's studio in the Capitol to watch the work in progress.

It was a brave and risky invitation. All those naysayers and critics betting that it couldn't be done, gazing over her shoulder as she worked, waiting for her to give up. After all, she was just a young woman, still in her teens, and most people thought that she would certainly fail. Still, she showed up and worked hard day after day until she had completed the Lincoln statue that still stands in the Capitol Rotunda today.

Similarly, at the beginning of every writing assignment, students need to ignore the inner critics and silence the naysayers that exist in their own minds. They must be persistent like Vinnie and have a fierce determination and belief in themselves and their voice. Most importantly, they need to be willing to slow down, take the time to explore, and risk making mistakes while focusing on the process and not on the grade.

At the end of the school year, our 8th graders take a class trip to Washington D.C., where they will have the opportunity to view Vinnie Ream's famous statue of President Lincoln holding the Emancipation Proclamation in his hand. Hopefully, her creation serves as a reminder of the invitation extended at the beginning of the school year to join our community of readers and writers, and also as a promise to return one day, sharing their own adventures and celebrating their creations. Part of the joy in teaching is learning how our students' stories turned out!



Posted by Dawn FitzGerald, author of Vinnie and Abraham.

African American History Month: Spotlight on Magic Trash

Author Jane Shapiro writes about her latest book, Magic Trash, a picture book biography of African American artist Tyree Guyton, who used his paintbrush to transform the decaying, crime-ridden neighborhood where he grew up into the Heidelberg Project, an interactive sculpture park in Detroit, Michigan.






An inspiring birdcage

While volunteering as a docent at the art museum of Michigan State University, I noticed the popularity of Tyree Guyton's American flag-painted worker's lunchbox locked inside a birdcage. Adults wrote poetry about the caged lunchbox, and children reached out to touch it.

I wondered then if the story of Tyree's art--complete with antagonists, disappointments, and triumphs--would appeal to a wide audience of children.


A working artist

Tyree Guyton and Jenenne Whitfield, Tyree's wife and the director of The Heidelberg Project, have both been helpful and supportive through all the years of writing. They patiently answered questions such as "What size paintbrush did Grandpa Sam give you?" Jenenne has been my main contact since Tyree is busy producing art and interacting with visitors on Heidelberg Street. But the day I observed him creating a sculpture was a real privilege and thrill.





Paint your world

My favorite passage from the book is:

"Paint the world," Grandpa said.

Tyree dipped into Grandpa's cans of color, sloshing purple, slapping yellow, aiming his brush like a magic wand. Abracadabra! Tyree's shyness vanished.

Sweet apples crunched when he glopped the red. He'd never seen Lake Huron, but now it splashed in a pool of blue.

I sign Magic Trash: "Paint your world" because that goal applies to all people, grown-ups, too.

Setting of Detroit

I've asked people attending book readings to guess the references to Detroit on the pages of Magic Trash. One woman eagerly called out, "Vernors ginger ale!"

When I researched the sixties of Tyree's youth in Detroit, I found that Martin Luther King had marched and spoken of his dream, Motown songs skipped off everyone's lips, and many residents were horrified when National Guard tanks rolled through the city.

Change had begun in the fifties when urban renewal encouraged residents to flee the city for the suburbs. Neighborhoods were bulldozed to build an Interstate, leaving many people homeless. Joblessness had begun to take hold with the infancy of outsourcing.

Heidelberg Street of even earlier decades had bustled with a diverse population of immigrants and folks from the south working in industry. Jenenne informed me that, as a child, the long-time White House correspondent, Helen Thomas, had lived in the same house in which Tyree grew up.

On recent visits to Detroit I have walked along the river, past the Tigers' new baseball stadium, on to the busy Eastern Market. I have seen Tyree's art exhibited at the Black History Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and Wayne State University. I have enjoyed a restaurant thriving in an immaculate 1894 mansion, and attended a jazz concert with original music dedicated to Tyree's work. Detroiters, like Tyree and Jenenne, are still inspiring others.

What is art?

My mother was an artist who encouraged my three brothers and me to be creative. She once won first place in an exhibit by painting a watercolor using a sponge dipped in dishwater.

I've never stopped enjoying and studying visual art in its many forms. Currently I lead school groups through the Portland Art Museum in Oregon where students can consider the question: "What it art?"






Posted by J. H. Shapiro, author of Magic Trash: A Story of Tyree Guyton and His Art, illustrated by Vanessa Brantley-Newton.

The Hall of OddAnimals

Writing and illustrating children's books can be a solitary activity. Sure, there are school, library, and bookstore visits, but much more of my creative time is spent alone at a drawing desk, trying desperately not to be distracted by email, food, or my cat.

That's one of many reasons I'm very excited about my OddAnimals project at the Children's Hospital Boston. Starting this past November and continuing through February of 2011, I will be working with patients, families, and staff of the hospital to create animals that have never been seen before by the human eye. We call them OddAnimals. These newly-discovered species will be displayed in the gallery in the lobby of the hospital. It's being guest-curated by Emily Isenberg and presented by Jessica Finch and her Art for Kool Kids Program.

Anyone can submit their own personal OddAnimal by attending a workshop or filling out an OddAnimal guidebook and dropping it in the mailbox in the Children's Hospital lobby. You, yes you, can even download the guidebook and email your completed form back to me.


"Now, what is an OddAnimal?" you might be asking yourself right about now. Um, I don't know, but through a series of workshops, activities, and conversations, I hope to find out. We've already distributed over 500 guidebooks and have received a bunch of great submissions. I have met incredible kids and awesome families who were excited and willing to help me out with this admittedly weird project.

As always, I am inspired and awed by the imagination of children. In fact, I see my main role in this project as trying not to mess up their perfectly great ideas and drawings. I haven't really even had to explain what an OddAnimal is, and most of the children already have an idea of what theirs will look like as soon as I sit down with them.

To introduce myself to the population of the hospital, we have installed a wall's worth of my artwork, including 2 pages from my Charlesbridge book, A Call for A New Alphabet, as well as pages from some of my other books and some cool, big wall stickers of the letter X and his friends.

Here are a few examples of the work we've created so far:

The Chale by Kaleb
"The Chale is a joyful, ocean-dwelling creature. Its slimy, elephant-sized body resembles that of a killer whale, but its head is closer to that of a cheetah. This playful animal feeds on penguins, krill, shark, cuttlefish, octopus, and squid, and is known for its ability to swim up to 500 miles per hour."

The Hugo by Kelsey

"The Hugo is a magical animal that is roughly the size of an elephant. Its green, purple, yellow, red, blue, orange, and black scales derive their color from the jelly beans that make up its diet. Its main activity is snooping around its mountain habitat in search of other animals to play with."

The Night Night by Brice

"The Night Night is a dinosaur-sized creature that lives in the mountains. Despite its angry nature, this sleepy animal is an herbivore, eating only leaves. It has fuzzy, green skin with blue spots."

Willy by Lily

"Willy is a horse-sized creature that playfully roams the forest in search of blueberries, which it eats with an extremely long tongue. It has fuzzy black and white fur."

And here is what Willy sounds like.

And my interpretation of him:

You can see some more OddAnimals on our Tumblr page or my Facebook page. Or, better yet, come by the Children's Hospital Boston to see the ever-evolving Hall of OddAnimals!

And here's the link to the book trailer for my new book, A Call for a New Alphabet!

Posted by Jef Czekaj, author and illustrator of A Call for a New Alphabet, due out February 2011.