Jerry Pinkney, a renowned book illustrator and a longtime supporter of the National Book Festival, died last week. He was 81. He is fondly remembered in this short essay.
LeVar Burton, fresh from a hosting "Jeopardy," turns his attention to hosting a special edition of the Library's 2021 National Book Festival, a one-hour special on PBS that is studded with some of the world's brightest literary stars.
Sybille Jagusch, chief of the Library's Literature Center, has just published "Japan and American Children's Books," a gorgeously illustrated volume that details how Japan and Japanese culture has been portrayed in American children's books over the past two centuries.
Russell Lee, the most prolific of the Farm Security Administration photographers who documented the nation in the 1930s and 1940s, is the subject of a new book co-published by the Library. Lee's 19,000 photographs for the FSA are preserved at the Library.
The Library recently acquired courtroom artist Mary Chaney's sketches from the trials of Rodney King in Los Angeles from 1992-1994. The Black motorist was beaten viciously by white police officers after a high-speed chase in 1991. The acquittal of the officers in state court set off days of deadly riots and became a touchstone in American society.