Picture Books & Beyond

Study of olive grove, Kaditah, northern Israel - (all artwork © Durga Yael Bernhard - do not reproduce)

A Picture Book Creates Its Author

Sometimes authors and illustrators don’t pick the subjects of their books.  Sometimes the subjects pick them.  Five years ago, I had no particular interest in olives.  Then the idea for a book about an ancient olive tree took root in my psyche, and has been growing ever since. 

This will not be my first book about a tree.  In 2000, I wrote and illustrated Earth, Sky, Wet, Dry: A Book of Nature Opposites (published by Orchard Books; later republished in Korea).  This book grew out of the desire to paint illustrations from the natural world around my home.   The fields and orchards where I lived along the Hudson River were bucolic and sunny, and made a lovely setting for a book.  I discovered the joy of illustrating a winter scene directly from my own window on a snowy day, or painting wildflowers from the nearby woods to include in the book.  My main subject was a pear tree from a nearby orchard – and all the flora and fauna that exist in the world of a single tree.  It didn’t have to be a pear tree; any fruit tree would have served just as well.  

Not so with the olive tree.  This time, the tree provided the seed, and the book has grown from there.   And just as the olive tree, with its unique gifts and long-reaching lifespan, has helped shaped human history for hundreds of centuries, it is having a shaping effect upon my life, too.  Like a pregnant woman who craves new foods her body knows it needs, in order to research this book I have found myself drawn to learn things that never would have interested me before.  I had the great good fortune to travel to Israel twice to visit ancient olive groves in the Galilee, and modern ones near Tel Aviv.  I talked with olive farmers and photographed olive presses with ancient grinding stones, and modern ones equipped with stainless steel centrifuges.  I read about the history of olives, how olive presses have developed over the centuries, and about the present-day olive oil industry.  Did you know that green olives are unripe black olives?  Did you know that the black olives sold in cans in American supermarkets are not really black?  Did you know most Italian olive oil comes from Spain?  Did you know “extra virgin” refers to the acid content in the oil?  I didn’t, before I started working on this book.  And there is so much more to learn.

Valley of the Cross, Jerusalem

This book is not just about trees.  It’s about people.  It’s about culture and tradition.  It’s about history, conquest, and peace.  It’s about food and farming, trade and technology.  Olive trees encompass all of these subjects and more.  The oil has annointed kings and is burned for light, miraculously sustained for eight nights in the story of Chanukah.  The dried “mash” of fiber and pits that are left behind after pressing is burned for fuel.  Charcoal from olive pits has been found in Jericho dating back ten thousand years.  And just as the trunks and limbs of these hardy fruit trees are sculpted by time into unique shapes, the wood of the olive tree has long been carved into bowls, spoons, and other objects.

The drawings and paintings you see here are some of my studies of olive trees and the environments in which they live.  I worked on site in pencil, and I took photographs from which to paint at home.  Here you see a portrait I did of the gnarled and sculpted bark of one particular tree in the Garden of Gethsemane, where legend holds that Jesus of Nazareth spent his last night before being arrested by Roman soldiers and made to carry a cross of olive wood up the Via Dolorosa.  Even before the Roman conquest of the Holy Land, the olive tree was a symbol of resurrection due to its miraculous regenerative powers.  This tree was alive then, and you can still see new growth sprouting from its ancient bark.  It is said that if an olive tree could talk, it would say, “Make me poor, and I’ll make you rich”, because hacking away at the tree makes it produce abundant fruit.  Olives are uniquely dependent upon humans, not just to unlock the  nutritious treasures of its bitter fruit, but to keep the trees pruned, without which they cannot live very long.  A tree that is properly pruned can live for thousands of years, constantly regenerating itself even as the older parts of the tree die.

City Olive, Jerusalem

As I write this post, the olive harvest is winding down all over the Middle East.  Israelis and Palestinians are taking their newly-picked olives to community presses, where techniques for curing and pressing, packaging and preserving are debated endlessly.  Like the land in which they grow, olives are a rich and complex subject, and the debate is often lively, and – despite what international headlines would have us believe – quite friendly.  Some of those presses are shared, as people travel back and forth across physical and cultural boundaries to get their olives pressed.  Olives, true to legend, do foster peace.  For olive-loving folk, the press is a place of common ground. 

Further north in Greece, France, Italy, and Spain, the harvest goes later.  With a little luck, I’ll be picking olives in one of these places next autumn.  What’s a year, in the lifespan of an olive tree?  In the meantime, my heart is with the harvest as I follow news of the olives from afar. 

I can’t wait to weave everything I’ve learned about olive trees into my future book.  Some books take a long time to ripen – but like well-seasoned wine or perfectly-blended oil, it’s well worth the wait. 

Under an olive tree in the Galilee, Israel - July 2011

Dear Readers:

Today’s “post” is a question to you.  As an artist and art appreciator, it’s something I’ve pondered a long time:

Why does the daytime moon – which we see so often throughout our lives – so rarely appear in art?

What do you think?

I’d love to hear back from some of you.  You can email me at durga.yael@gmail.com, or write a comment for this post.

My best to all on a sunny November day,

Durga Yael

Beyond Internet Research

As the illustrator and author of multicultural picture books, I find myself researching and learning about the most unexpected things.  From a Tuareg teapot in the Sahara to a griddle for making tortillas in Guatemala, cultural details must be accurate.  To my surprise, I have found names to be one of the most challenging subjects to research.  First names, that is.  Having had several nicknames in my own life, I understand how sensitive people can be to what they are called.  And as much as fashion, art, automobiles, and architecture, names reflect the time and place from which they come.

My recently published picture book AROUND THE WORLD IN ONE SHABBAT (Jewish Lights, 2011) features children from thirteen cultures around the world.  These children are all part of the Jewish Diaspora – defined by Merriam Webster as “the scattering of a people away from their ancestral homeland”.   Some of the children in my book live in places where the Jewish population is expanding; others live as tiny minorities that are vanishing from the surrounding culture.  In each case, children are named according to both local customs and traditional Hebrew names.

Turning to the internet as always, I set about my search for authentic names.  I also wanted to use names that would appeal to my readers.  Beginning with Turkey, I quickly discovered the names of famous Turkish Jews who had lived a century ago.  But if names like Esther, Bertha, Alfred, and Arthur that were popular when my parents were kids are absent from school rosters here today, how could I assume the Turkish names I found would still be used in modern Istanbul?

The short answer is that I couldn’t assume anything . . . and found myself delving further and further into each culture in order to find names that would ring true today.  In each case, I found something to confirm my choice.  Reaching a rabbi on the phone in Istanbul, I was surprised to discover the names Leyla and David are popular among contemporary Turkish Jews. “You could pick the same names that would be popular on the Upper West Side of Manhattan,” Rabbi Naftali Haleva told me in perfect English.

Next I turned to Ethiopia.  Searching the Jerusalem Post, I found an article about a young Ethiopian man named Avraham who was a medical student in Israel.  As a member of a tiny, vanishing Jewish community in his country of origin, Avraham was proud to bear the name of the first patriarch.  Likewise, the ancient name Zipporah (the wife of Moses) is still popular among the Jews of Mumbai, a small enclave that has endured in India for centuries.  Speaking to a Russian immigrant here in the U.S., I discovered the Yiddish Zayde could still be heard as a name for grandpa in St. Petersburg; and among the modern Sephardic Jews of Morocco, the name Hayyim – meaning “life” – is still used today.

As I unearthed each of these names, other cultural details were revealed which helped flesh out my characters and lend authenticity to each scene.  Finding the name Simone for the French girl in the book led me to an article about French food, and the right choice of desserts to be shown in the art.   Even the dog in my Australian scene needed the right name.  After some debate, my editor and I settled on Latka – Yiddish for “potato pancake”. According to Merriam Webster, the word comes from the original Ukrainian “oladka”, and has only been used since 1927.  The name fit the dog perfectly – but it would not have made sense a hundred years ago.

Considering the special challenge of finding authentic names, I wasn’t surprised when author and reviewer Barbara Krasner posted a review of AROUND THE WORLD IN ONE SHABBAT on her own blog, with questions about the names in the book.  She rates books according to concept, customs, tone, detail of illustrations, and authenticity.  You can read the review by clicking here.  Thank you, Barbara, for reviewing my book.  I hope I have answered your questions!

My newest picture book proposal once again challenges me in choosing an authentic name.  This is the story of a young girl growing up in rural France in the 1920s.  Researching the charming styles of children’s clothing and shoes, dolls and baby carriages, and even painted lead soldiers that were popular at the time was not so difficult.  But finding a name that would be stylish for the child of a distinguished family of that era, AND that would appeal to young readers today, is not so easy.  There are marketing considerations as well:  my first choice, Madeleine, after the middle name of the woman upon whose life the character is based, cannot be used because of the famous children’s book series by that name.  My second choice, Marie Claire, after my friend and colleague who inspired the book to begin with, would never have been used in the 1920s, I was told.

There’s no lack of internet sites that sport all the baby names under the sun, and their origins.  And there is no lack of etymological resources.  But finding the right names is another matter, and goes beyond the internet.  As with any nuance of language or art, there’s no formula for finding the right answers, and no substitute for talking to people.  That’s one of the many challenges of writing and illustrating children’s books . . . and one which this author and illustrator finds enriching.

Speaking of rich, that’s a chocolate eclair and a lemon tart shown in the illustration.  A hundred years ago, Simone and Maurice would have had different names, and probably would have been eating different desserts.  But for now, they seem happy, and so am I.

To order AROUND THE WORLD IN ONE SHABBAT, please click here, or visit my webstore.