Barry Moser is an award winning children's book illustrator and writer who intentioned neither this career or acclaim. He is an artist who immerses himself in his work so completely, that he only follows where art and serendipities lead. Moser was educated as a painter at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga. Fascination with art led him to buying and treasuring a small wood engraving. Curiosity about engraving led on a long quest of teaching himself etching, book making, and illustrating a string of classic stories. The publication of his first children's book, Jump: The Adventures of Brer Rabbit, brought him into the fold of the children's book industry. (For ages 5 and up, now available in a set with a tape by Whoopie Goldberg, HBJ, $19.95)

Part of Moser's work is still illustrating classics. This year his twelve powerful watercolors bring alive the drama of character of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Ages 10 and up; Morrow, $20.00). He enriches a Romanian re-telling, showing the dark corners of Noah's Ark in Arielle North Olson's Noah's Cats and the Devil's Fire (Ages 5 and up; Orchard, $14.95). He offers illustrations for Nancy Willard's Beauty and the Beast that elevate the story to the levels of Jean Cocteau's film rendition. (Ages 6 and up; HBJ, $19.95). His illustrations for Handel's Messiah: The Wordbook for the Oratorio vary in timbre from glory to thoughtfulness (all ages; HarperCollins, $20.00). He adds a delicious shiver to Henry Treece's scary verses of The Magic Woods (ages 5 and up; HarperCollins, $14.00).

Work mingles with magic in Moser's process. His passion for work absorbs him. He works ten hours, seven days a week, producing an average of six books a year. He invested twenty years in the mastery of book production and now he turns this same dedication to every book he creates. Without ever taking a course he came to understand book design, typography, calligraphy and a intense love of books that can only come "when you set one letter at a time." His self-led investigation and formal painting education gave him an sensitivity towards how complete books can be.

Creating integrated, whole books comes into every part of his process. Unlike many children's book illustrators, his execution begins with setting the type. He then turns toward the preparation of the illustrations, going over them day after day, blending photographs, scraps and sketches. With his drafting skills, he marries disparate realistic elements to things which are unrealistic, creating an art that is surrealistic in some ways. He's just beginning the illustrations for his retelling of Tucker Pfeffercorn which will be published next fall by Little Brown. To create the main character, he merges photographs of his denim-jacketed two year old granddaughter with a bald-headed state trooper who "looks like he eats two year olds for breakfast."

Perhaps the bigger reason for the wholeness of his books is his visioning. In his mind the separate illustrations actually go together to make up one picture--a composite of paintings, design, calligraphy, the density and color of type, width of margin, the space between lines and margins, the binding, the running heads and paper the book is printed on. "All these things come together just as if you're standing in front of a painting in a museum."

Through the Mickle Woods (Little Brown and Company, $15.95, readers 10 - adult) is written by Valiska Gregory and illustrated by Barry Moser. It one of those rare books that imprints and endures as a complete image. The story tells of a king who mourns the death of his beloved queen. Grieving separates him from life until a small boy, also mourning this kind woman, shows him how vibrant life can be when a heart that has known loneliness, disappointment, and confusion dares to care, live, and love again. Barry Moser's initial portrait of the king is a self-portrait of himself in sadness. When he began the book, he was mourning the death of one of his best friends.

Through the Mickle Woods is balanced with light. The illustrations echo the brightness of the king's rediscovery life and mirror Moser's Heraclitian belief that the tension between opposites is the essence of art. The book is framed by a snowy woods that lends a quiet tone of thoughtfulness and sets up a feeling of a long quiet walk into Moser's succession of forest scenes that could be linked together into a painting eight feet long.

Children's books have been good to Barry Moser in greater ways than awards of money and acclaim. He considers that children's books gave him three major gifts. They led him back to his training and first love as a painter. Secondly, remembering the Brer Rabbit stories of his youth took him back into his own childhood, a past filled with racism and lacking in art and books, that he tried for many years to forget.

The third gift children's books was discovering writing fiction. Overlaying his personal style and artistic vision on original tales, Moser transformed The Tinderbox (Ages 5 and up; Little Brown, $14.95) into a Southern tale of high drama and exquisite watercolors. He reframed the tragic British ballad of Polly Vaughn (Ages 6 and up; Little Brown, $19.95) into an honest story of feuding Southern families and is now working on his third re-telling, Tucker Pfeffercorn.

Characteristically, Moser balances his received gifts into a whole with the gift he gives children's books. He honors his art and the integrity of his books first and foremost. This honesty brings children face to face with the seriousness of art. He offers them a book that derives from a hand-made, rather than a machine-made tradition. He gives children richness. He wants them to go away from his books like "they've had a full meal, not just icing and ice cream from a birthday party. When kids sit down at my books, they're sitting down at Thanksgiving dinner."

©Susie Wilde 1998