William Stark’s character experience

Stark was born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 14, 1907, and spent his childhood in the Bronx. His father was an Austrian immigrant who worked painting houses. His parents are both art lovers. He was influenced by his family's creative environment since he was a child and has a strong interest in painting. His elder brother Erwin, a professional painter, was his first painting teacher. In addition to paintings, there are many creative works that build the imaginary world of his childhood: "Grimm's Fairy Tales", "Robinson Crusoe", Charlie Chaplin's movies, "Robin Hood", "King Arthur and the Legend of the Knights of the Round Table" " and Huberdink's opera "Candy House", especially Collodi's "Pinocchio" left a deep impression on him.

As a boy, Stark showed off his talent by drawing cartoons for the high school newspaper. Young Stark also excelled in sports and was selected for the All-American water polo team in college. He attended City College for two years, National Junior College for three years, and attended Yale School of Fine Arts for five days before giving up. "If I could have chosen my own path, I would have been a professional athlete, or a sailor, or a beach bum, or something else," Stark told Publishers Weekly's David Allender. A wandering life, or a painter, a gardener, a novelist, a banjo player, a traveler. In short, no matter what I do, I will never become a rich man. When I was a young boy, Tahiti was mine. Paradise. I was determined to live there one day, and I planned to be a sailor like Melville, but the Great Depression forced me to work as a cartoonist to support my family." p>

“My father went bankrupt during the Great Depression. My older brother got married and started a family on his own, and my younger brother was only 17. So my father said to me, ‘It’s all up to you now.’ All I could do at the time was draw. "Within a year, I was selling comics to The New Yorker to support the family." His father's strong, independent values ??deeply influenced him. "My father was a socialist. He believed that doing business was dishonorable, but he also did not want his children to become laborers. He encouraged us to engage in music and art." In this regard, Stark inherited his father's He told his children not to work nine-to-five jobs, and they followed his advice: son Jeremy is a jazz flautist, daughter Lucy is a painter, and Maggie is a Actress.

Before Stark started writing children's books, he was already a well-known cartoonist for "The New Yorker" magazine. In his early years, when he was a freelance painter, he also earned a handsome income from advertising creations, but he hated advertising very much. In the 1940s, Stark found another career that suited his temperament and began to make statues out of wood. His sculptures are in the collection of the Roosevelt House in Hyde Park, New York, and in several New England museums. Stark also claimed to be the originator of the "contemporary style" greeting cards, saying in an interview: "The greeting cards of the past were usually in a sweet and cute style, and I started doing them in the complete opposite style - it almost became 'hate' Card'—and the style caught on."

Stark's late start in writing children's books was more accidental than intentional. In 1968, one of his cartoonist colleagues at The New Yorker, Bob Krause, was forming Windmill Books. Klaus suggested that Stark write something and draw a book for children. As a result, Stark published a word puzzle book called C D B! in 1968, as well as a book called Roland the Bard. Jonathan Cotter commented in the book "Wisdom in Children's Literature" that "Roland the Bard" is "a charming work, but it is not Stark's main work... It is Stark's role as a child." An experimental work by a book creator."

The talented Stark's entry into the field of children's book creation through study was quite short-lived. His next novel, "The Boy Who Turned to Stone," won the Caldecott Medal, placing him among the best children's book creators. "Little Donkey Turns into Stone" tells the story of a little donkey who loves to collect pebbles. It is often interpreted as a metaphor about death and childhood helplessness. One day, Little Donkey finds a lovely red pebble that satisfies his desire. All wishes. The donkey boy was about to take it home to show his parents when he met a lion on the road. Without thinking, he wished that he would turn into a rock so that the lions could not attack him, but he was trapped in a stone body ever since. Finally one day, his parents went out for a picnic and happened to sit on him and found the magic stone, so he transformed back into a donkey body. Anita Meuse commented in "The St. James Writer's Guide to Children's Books" that this picture book "has deservedly earned its reputation as one of the most outstanding works of picture books in contemporary America. ... Stark shows The children's fear of being separated from their parents, and their ambivalence about being suddenly transformed"

"Like Isaac Singer, White and a host of others. Like a writer, Stark, as a children's book creator, strives to transcend the established boundaries of children's reading objects," James Higgins wrote in "Children's Literature in Education." “He had an unusual, childlike ability to present events full of fantasy and wonder as if they were everyday occurrences.

His creations are not derived from his childhood memories, but from a certain essence of childhood, which no adult can give up or reject. "The power of luck, the ability to transform and regenerate, the presence of good magic, all these are manifestations of this "essence of childhood" that recurs constantly in Stark's works.

Stark Ke prefers to use animals in his stories because it gives him more space to tell the story, and children enjoy seeing animals behave like people they know well. “I think using animals can emphasize the point. Stories are symbolic, they symbolize human behavior. "And the kids knew right away that this wasn't just a story, it was something real in life," Stark told Higgins. " Stark opposed adding social and political tone to his works, pretending to have any special value. In his works, human beings' concerns about survival, self-discovery and death are all dealt with very indirectly. "I am This is how it feels: I will have a stance - a point of view. But I don’t have to think about expressing it necessarily. I can write about anything and my perspective will come out. So when I'm creating, my intention is just to tell a story for the reader, and the rest happens on its own. "

In 1972, Stark published his first children's novel "Dominique the Handsome Dog", a story about a dog hero. Dominique, a contemporary King Arthur, emerged from the evil He rescued the victims from the "Doomsday Bandits" and played a beautiful melody on his piccolo during the battle. Meuse said that "Dominique the Handsome Dog" is a carefully created and beautiful fantasy work, full of poetry. Love makes dreams come true.

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