{"id":39502,"date":"2015-09-14T12:02:22","date_gmt":"2015-09-14T16:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=39502"},"modified":"2015-09-14T12:10:07","modified_gmt":"2015-09-14T16:10:07","slug":"inkers-shadow-allen-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/inkers-shadow-allen-say\/","title":{"rendered":"The Inker’s Shadow by Allen Say"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Inker's<\/a>Caldecott Medalist author\/illustrator Allen Say introduced his personal portrait-of-an-artist-as-a-young-man in the one title he didn’t illustrate, the autobiographical middle-grade novel, The Ink-Keeper’s Apprentice<\/a><\/em>, originally published in 1979. More than three\u00a0decades later, in 2011, Say returned to his early artistic journey, reworking his Apprentice<\/i> into a hybrid picture book\/graphic memoir in the multi-award-winning\u00a0Drawing from Memory<\/a>.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Say’s\u00a0transatlantic odyssey continues on this\u00a0side of the world in\u00a0The Inker’s Shadow<\/em> \u2013 hitting shelves this month \u2013 when, at just 15, he “decided to go to America and make a name for [him]self.” He landed via ship\u00a0in the summer of 1953 in southern California with just a cardboard suitcase and a paint box from his beloved Sensei (“teacher” in Japanese), the renowned cartoonist Noro Shinpei. A starring character in Memory<\/em>, Sensei was more a parent to\u00a0Say\u00a0than his\u00a0own father\u00a0ever was or would be.<\/p>\n

Although Say traveled across the oceans from Japan with said\u00a0father, his new stepmother, and his baby half-sister, his father\u00a0is all too\u00a0eager to say good-bye to his only son: the teenager is unceremoniously handed over\u00a0in the care of an\u00a0American friend Bill with just $10 and the admonishment, “‘Don’t disgrace me in America.”<\/p>\n

Under Bill’s tutelage, Say entered the Harding Military Academy in Glendora, California\u00a0\u2013 a town Say likens to “an Edward Hopper painting with palm trees.” Bill’s father had founded the school before World War II. His fellow students, Say recalls, “were friendly and\u00a0very curious about a new arrival from their former enemy country.” Yet Say’s\u00a0only reliable companion was his “comic shadow” Kyusuke, a mischievous character created by Sensei, who enjoyed\u00a0an envious life of endless freedom.<\/p>\n

To earn his tuition, Say works in the kitchen, then helps the handyman outside. He’s placed in sixth grade in spite of his age; he wears a uniform, even as he “looked like a fake\u00a0GI and talked like one.” He gets a room of his own, separated at the request\u00a0of paying parents who see only an enemy in him. He\u00a0gets ejected from the Academy because Bill is\u00a0certain Say’s father would take his own son back: “Father is a prince to his friends, but to his family he’s an ogre,” Say clarifies.<\/p>\n

His peripatetic, self-sufficient\u00a0adventures resume, landing him in\u00a0a tiny town with one hotel and a main street. He’s accosted by two policeman for\u00a0carrying his dinner of peanut butter and crackers back to his rented room, but he’s befriended by the high school principal who calls him “son,” who\u00a0guides him to a job and indirectly back to his art. The continued kindness of strangers sustains and nourishes him until he’s ready to leave again, this time heading north to the city of his mother’s birth.<\/p>\n

Surely Say’s\u00a0journey will continue in a future volume to come\u00a0…<\/p>\n

An extensive “Author’s Note,” complete with half-century-old photographs from Say’s past, heightens\u00a0his graphic memories here, adding gravitas to his experiences, difficult and joyous both. In spite of the magnitude of Say’s challenges \u2013 he’s little more than a child arriving in a country that has too recently bombed his homeland to shreds, he’s abandoned by his family and somehow expected to survive alone\u00a0\u2013 Say never, ever succumbs to maudlin self-pity; his matter-of-fact, often humorous remembrances of things past is testimony to an exemplary, resilient\u00a0young man. His\u00a0Shadow<\/em>\u00a0embodies gratitude, and becomes a precious gift of acknowledgement to the many who supported his artistic soul in so many ways, enabling him to become one of this\u00a0country’s most admired, respected, treasured children’s books creators.<\/p>\n

Say’s wondrous feat of drawing from memory continues here, taking him clearly out of any shadows onto the bright, open, welcoming page. Grateful readers are we …<\/p>\n

Readers<\/strong>: Children, Middle Grade<\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>: 2015<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Caldecott Medalist author\/illustrator Allen Say introduced his personal portrait-of-an-artist-as-a-young-man in the one title he didn’t illustrate, the autobiographical middle-grade novel, The Ink-Keeper’s Apprentice, originally published in 1979. More than three\u00a0decades later, in 2011, Say returned to his early artistic journey, reworking his Apprentice into a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38403,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,76,426,107,20],"tags":[474,205,83,6608,58,189,11,25,6574,39,173,45],"class_list":["post-39502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-children-picture-books","category-japanese","category-japanese-american","category-memoir","category-nonfiction","tag-allen-say","tag-art-architecture","tag-assimilation","tag-bookdragon","tag-coming-of-age","tag-father-son-relationship","tag-friendship","tag-immigration","tag-inkers-shadow","tag-parent-child-relationship","tag-travel","tag-war"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Inker's Shadow by Allen Say - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/inkers-shadow-allen-say\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Inker's Shadow by Allen Say - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Caldecott Medalist author\/illustrator Allen Say introduced his personal portrait-of-an-artist-as-a-young-man in the one title he didn’t illustrate, the autobiographical middle-grade novel, The Ink-Keeper’s Apprentice, originally published in 1979. 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