We writers never know the impact the book we're writing will have, if it's ever published. We just kinda cross our fingers.
Some of our books hit a little, but a few hit big.
I mean really big.
The Polar Express big.
Read on and meet the man who created The Polar Express.
Chris Van Allsburg, children's writer and illustrator
I'll be honest, as popular as The Polar Express is, I never read it . . . until after I saw Tom Hanks' film version.
What a great ride that movie was.
So I bought the book.
What magic there is in the story and the drawings that writer/artist Chris Van Allsburg created in those brief 32 pages.
Well, if you have children, you know it. You've read The Polar Express to them.
Van Allsburg came to the Edgerton Book & Film Festival here in southern Wisconsin back in October where the event's sponsors presented him with the Sterling North Award for Excellence in Children's Literature.
He came into town onboard a steam train.
The right thing to do.
I was there that day because, like Van Allsburg, I was slated to make a presentation, but at one of the festival's smaller venues . . . and I thought I'd slip over to the depot, bang off a couple pictures, and have him sign my copy of the 25th anniversary edition of his book.
Yes, The Polar Express came out in 1984. The 25th anniversary was last year.
People loved the book when it came out.
And the Association for Library Service to Children awarded Van Allsburg its Caldecott Medal for "the most distinguished American picture book for children" for that year.
It was Van Allsburg's second Caldecott. He won his first three years earlier for his book Jumanji.
But back to Edgerton.
The line of children and their parents waiting to get into the depot was two blocks long . . . and it stayed that long from 10 in the morning to almost 3 in the afternoon.
My grandson and his dad waited two hours to get inside and meet Van Allsburg. So did another boy I knew and his dad.
Everyone must have waited that long.
So I didn't get my picture.
And I didn't get my autograph.
I could have—and should have—the night before because Van Allsburg and I were at the festival's authors reception . . . a meet-and-greet affair. I said to Van Allsburg then that I didn't want to impose, that I would see him the next day.
My loss.
He never set out to be a writer. Van Allsburg instead intended to be a sculptor and enjoyed success in the field, even opened his own studio. It was his wife who looked at his drawings and said, Chris, you really ought to be illustrating children's books.
She showed one of his pictures—a carbon pencil and charcoal drawing of a lump in a carpet and a man raising a chair to hit it—to children's book editor Walter Lorraine at Houghton Mifflin. Lorraine studied the drawing for a moment and said, "If he can get this much storytelling content into one piece of art, I know he can create a children's book."
Lorraine offered a contract if Van Allsburg would come up with a book.
So the sculptor ginned up an idea for a story. Thus in 1979, he wrote and illustrated his first book, The Garden of Abdul Gasazi.
A superb book, loved by its readers . . . and Van Allsburg won a Caldecott Honor Medal for it.
Since then, he's written and illustrated sixteen books. You've also seen his art on the covers of the 1994 HarperCollins edition of C.S. Lewis's series, The Chronicles of Narnia.
And he's illustrated three children's books that Mark Helprin wrote.
A busy guy, more comfortable in his studio than out in the public, talking about his books and signing them.
Van Allsburg does relatively few appearances and almost passed up Edgerton.
He ignored author booker Mark Scarborough's calls, but when a large envelope arrived containing invitations to the festival from Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle and U.S. Senator Russ Feingold . . .
"Well," said Van Allsburg at the authors' reception, "anyone who can get a governor and a U.S. Senator to invite me, this is something I better look at."
The book's impact
One last story . . . and it's a story that Van Allsburg tells.
"On a snowy December evening, as I inscribed a book to a woman in her sixties, she told me that it was the second copy she had owned, and wanted to know if she could she tell me what had happened to the first.
"'Of course,' I answered.
"A dozen years earlier the woman, who had no children of her own, befriended a neighbor, a boy of about seven, named Eddie. He would often cross his driveway to visit her.
"She had a collection of picture books, which she read to him, but around the holidays, the only story he ever wanted to hear, over and over, was The Polar Express. One year she offered to give him the book, but Eddie declined because he wanted to hear her read it aloud to him, which she continued to do every year until the boy and his family moved away.
"Years later, the woman learned from a mutual acquaintance that Eddie had grown up and become a soldier. He was stationed in Iraq. Since Christmas was approaching, the woman decided to send him a gift box. She included candy, cookies, socks, and her old copy of The Polar Express. She wasn't sure what a nineteen-year-old battle-weary soldier would do with the book in an army barracks in the Middle East, but she wanted him to have it. A month later, after the holidays had passed, she received a letter from Eddie.
"He told her he was very happy to have heard from her and to get the box of gifts. He had opened it in his barracks, just before curfew, with some of his fellow GIs already in their bunks. A soldier in the next bunk spotted the book. He knew it well from his own childhood and asked Eddie to read it.
"'Out loud?' he asked.
"'Yeah,' his buddy told him.
"Eddie, quietly and a little self-consciously, read The Polar Express. When he'd finished and closed the book, a moment of silence passed. Then from behind him a voice called out, 'Read it again,' and another joined in, 'Yeah, read it again,' and a third added, 'This time, louder.' So Eddie did.
"He wrote to the woman that he'd stood up and read it to his comrades just the way he remembered she had read it to him."
© Jerry Peterson.
