Kaethe Zemach (1958-) Biography

(Kaethe Zemach-Bersin)

Born 1958, in Boston, MA; marriage ended); Education: Attended schools in England, Denmark, and the United States.

Agent—c/o Author Mail, Little, Brown and Co., 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

Artist and writer.

Children's Book of the Year award, Child Study Association, 1975, and Children's Book Showcase citation, 1976, both for The Princess and Froggie.

(With Harve Zemach) The Princess and Froggie (short stories for children), illustrated by Margot Zemach, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 1975.

SELF-ILLUSTRATED

(Adapter) The Beautiful Rat, Four Winds (New York, NY), 1979.

(As Kaethe Zemach-Bersin) The Funny Dream, Greenwillow Books (New York, NY), 1988.

The Character in the Book, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1998.

Just Enough and Not Too Much, Arthur A. Levine Books (New York, NY), 2003.

The Question Song, Little, Brown (New York, NY), 2003.

ILLUSTRATOR

Norman Rosten, The Wineglass: A Passover Story, Walker (New York, NY), 1978.

Yuri Suhl, The Purim Goat, Four Winds (New York, NY), 1980.

Eve Bunting, The Traveling Men of Ballycoo, Harcourt (San Diego, CA), 1983.

(As Kaethe Zemach-Bersin) David Zemach-Bersin and Mark Reese, Relaxercise: The Easy Way to Health and Fitness, Harper & Row (San Francisco, CA), 1990.

The Princess and Froggie is available as a filmstrip with cassette, Doubleday Multimedia.

Given her family history, it is no surprise that Kaethe Zemach chose to create children's books for a living. Her parents are Harve and Margot Zemach, a noted children's book author and illustrator, respectively. In collaboration with them, Zemach received her first publishing credits—on the short story collection The Princess and Froggie—at the age of fourteen. Since then, Zemach has illustrated books for other authors and created several self-illustrated titles, including The Character in the Book, The Question Song, and Just Enough and Not Too Much.

The Character in the Book is just "a wisp of a story," noted a Publishers Weekly reviewer, but Zemach's "exuberant art" gives the book "a robust vitality." The Character in the Book, a jester-like boy with striped hose, actually inhabits his book. But then his aunt invites him to come visit her in her book, so the Character has to find a way out of his. The only way out, he discovers, is to get to the end of the book, so he sets out to do this as quickly as possible—by "skipping and hopping and running" on one spread, "whirling and twirling and spinning" on another, and finally jumping clean out of the book.

The Question Song is a simple, rhyming story about two preschool children who encounter minor domestic disasters (spilled juice, missing toys) and ask their parents "What are we going to do?" On the facing page, the adult outlines a simple solution to the problem, and then declares, "That's what we will do!" Zemach's illustrations for The Question Song received a great deal of attention. She used a nineteenth-century technique called "theorem painting," which involves cutting scores of small stencils and using them to apply oil paint to velvet. She first encountered theorem painting at a historical crafts fair near her home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and was instantly smitten. "It certainly isn't simple," Zemach said on Time Warner Bookmark, "but I love the results!" Critics loved the technique as well. A Kirkus Reviews critic praised Zemach's "soft and expressive edges, lively colors, and charming use of pattern," while School Library Journal contributor Anna DeWind Walls noted that the illustrations' "soft, blurred lines . . . give the book an old-fashioned yet timely look."

The concept of greed, and the unhappiness that often accompanies it, is introduced to children in Zemach's book Just Enough and Not Too Much. Though he only owns a few things, Simon the fiddler has everything he needs for a simple, comfortable life. One day, however, Simon decides that his possessions number too few, so he goes about acquiring new ones. Soon his small house becomes so crowded that he can no longer entertain his friends with his fiddling skills. Disappointed, Simon decides to invite all of his friends and ask them to choose a gift for themselves from his newly acquired but unsatisfying things. Booklist reviewer Ilene Cooper thought that Just Enough and Not Too Much offered young readers "a wonderful message wrapped in a honey of a tale," while School Library Journal critic Wendy Woodfill found the "rich watercolor-and-gouache illustrations . . . full of movement and joy."