Things They Won't Teach You in Art School

Today Lesson: Quilt Pieces

You will strive and strive to receive some level of fame as a children's book illustrator on your own. You will create beautiful art, but you will go unappreciated for years. Then, one day, you hit the big time. And how do you know when "the big time" has arrived, children? It's when people start sending you quilt pieces for your significant style.

Says Mo Willems in a recent blog post, "One of the things they neglect to tell you at author/illustrator school is that once your books come out you will be inundated with mail containing little pieces of cloth which you are meant to doodle upon for the good of some worthy local literary organization. They are quilt patches; meant to be assembled, displayed, and then sold as a fundraiser."

He even has a picture of one up for viewing. I suggest you play Quilt Bingo with it. See if you can identify the teensy tiny blurry art of seven or eight artists horizontally, vertically, or kitty-cornerally. Here are my guesses of artists included. Mo Willems. David Shannon. Peter Sis. Mark Teague. Uh... is that Gabi Swiatkowska? That's definitely Alexandra Day there. Oh look! You can click on the pic and it gets bigger! Technology is a marvel. Okay, now I can see Brenda Clark, Marc Brown, perhaps Tomie dePaola, and what looks to maybe be a Steven Kellogg (wow).

Who have I missed?