Write and draw truth and joy and friendship and power and overcoming and the exquisite natural world and human experience. Your stories matter, these works of first Art you create for children through text and through pictures.

Take heed and take heart, those of you who are makers of books for the young. The book eventually brought Spieler to the larger story of its author/illustrator, which she and her amazing collaborators bring to joyful, painful, piercing, and ultimately hopeful life on the stage. What I do wish to remark upon in this literary venue is the genesis of this show, a seed planted decades ago through the pages of a picture book into the creative, brilliant, inspired mind and spirit of a teenaged Sandy Spieler (one of the founders of In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre, and its artistic director since 1976). Links to these reviews are below, and I won’t restate their content here except to reiterate that the work tells the story of the Caldecott Honor (1956) book Crow Boy’s author and illustrator, Taro Yashima (the pen name of Atsushi Iwamatsu). There are several excellent, insightful reviews of The Story of Crow Boy, on stage February 18 – 28, 2016, at Minneapolis’ (MN) In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre. In the Heart of the Beast play In the Heart of the Beast, photo credit: Bruce Silcox, Minneapolis StarTribune

Crow Boy by Taro Yashima