Image Credit: Tomie dePaola on Amazon
Illustration from The Art Lesson

Image Credit: Tomie dePaola on Amazon
Illustration from The Art Lesson

 

Image Credit: Tomie dePaola on Amazon
Illustration from The Art Lesson

Image Credit: Tomie dePaola on Amazon
Illustration from The Art Lesson

Image Credit: Tomie dePaola on Amazon
Illustration from The Art Lesson

[Note: Maureen is the older of Tomie dePaola’s two younger sisters]

Image Credit: Tomie dePaola on Amazon
Illustration from The Art Lesson

Image Credit: Tomie dePaola on Amazon
Illustration from The Art Lesson

Image Credit: Tomie dePaola on Amazon
Illustration from The Art Lesson

The Story Continues:

“His dad took them to the barber shop where he worked.

“Tom and Nana, Tommy’s Irish grandfather and granmother, had his pictures in their grocery store.

“Nana-Fall-River, his Italian grandmother, put one in a speial frame on the table next to the photograph of Aunt Clo in her wedding dress.” DePaola, The Art Lesson.

I’ll pause here for a minute. At this point, dePaola has progressed several pages into the book, but the true story has not begun. Up to this point, dePaola has “shown” us the background for the story [as in “show” — don’t “tell.”]

Let’s look at page 1 again:

The words on page 1 tell us that Tommy [Tomie] loved to draw, but the pictures show us a great deal more about Tommy, as a child, and the Tomie that survived the process of growing up. Foremost, notice the little drawing that the child is trying to sell for 5 cents:

The juggling clown, in the image above, speaks volumes:

In her excellect biography of Tomie dePaola, Barbara Elleman talks about dePaola’s autobiographical books:

“In The Art Lesson, his photographer cousins make a cameo appearance….

“… dePaola’s wonderful assortment of Irish and Italian relatives arrives on the page richly arrayed in costume. expression, and personality. Reading dePaoloa’s autobiographical books is akin to getting to know the family–some sadness and pain show through, but love abounds. He contends that turning his childhood joys and traumas into stories delivers a core of reality that children can relate to and allows himself, as the writer, the opportunity for fictional invention.”

“DePaola the child is, of course, the focus of these stories. Readers meet him most often as the character Tommy–although sometimes he appears under other moniers. Tommy had his debut in Nana in 1973; then after a sixteen-year absence, he returne in three titles (The Art Lesson, Tom, and The Baby Sister). In between, dePaola continued drawing upon his childhood experiences, veiling himself umder other character names. He is Bobby in Now One Foot, Now the Other; Joey in Watch Out for the Chicken Feet in Your Soup; Andy in Andy, That’s M Name; and Oliver in Oliver Button Is a Sissy.

“His return to using Tommy as a character name signifies, perhaps, an increased ease with his childhood self and a willingess to share that person directly with young readers. In offering children the opportunity to exerience his real-life situations, dePaola lets his own vulnerability surface. …

“While dePaola’s autobiographical stories focus on events, which pivot the stories’ action, the underlying emotional issues are what tug at the heart. Deceptively sinple, his books often contain layers of meanng. He deftly wraps the pleasure of an understanding teacher, the distressful death of a grandparent, the importance of a name, the arrival of a new sibling in the comfortaing cocoon of story. As these incidents unfold, young readers gain saisfaction from seeing the littlest (themselves) rising to face the adult world. At the same time. adults enjoy the stories from the vantage point of both the children they once were and the adults they have become.”Elleman, Tomie dePaola: His Art and His Stories, pgs. 25-26.

Books Other Than DePaola’s Officially Labeled Autobiographical Tales Were Autobiographical

Before I continue talking about the DePaola’s books that are officially considered to be autobiographical, I want to return to the following comment:

“His return to using Tommy as a character name signifies, perhaps, an increased ease with his childhood self….” Elleman, pg. 26.

In the above phrase, Elleman suggests that for years [perhaps forever], dePaola was not comfortable with himself. In another part of her biography of dePaola, Elleman addresses the fact that dePaola was gay years before he acknowledged that to the public. In yet another part of her biography, Elleman reported that Tomie felt that his older brother Joe was the family favorite. [When I read how his family celebrated and displayed his art in The Art Lesson, I am not sure that Tomie was the less favorite son, but that is how he felt.] In Oliver Button is a Sissy, dePaola addresses the fact that he felt that he was an outsider–a sissy. In another part of her biography, Elleman tells the reader that he was into theater, song, and dance–and he always loved drawing, in lieu of the things that other boys enjoyed. Tomie dePaola was deeply religious. Early in his life, he tried the monastic lifestyle. For all of these reasons, I wonder if dePaola considered himself to be a “Clown of God.”

Compare the little drawing in The Art Lesson to the Clown of God:

In his book Olver Button Is a Sissy, dePaola shows Oliver [himself] as a child drawing. Behind the seated child, some of his art is tacked to the wall. Notice that the child has drawn a juggling clown–again, The Clown of God:

Image Credit: Amazoniver
Oliver Button was published in 1979. DePaola’s book The Clown of God was published in 1978.

In 1964, the hit song “See the Funny Little Clown” was released. I was 14 at that time, and I identified with the lyrics: “He laughs on the outside and cries on the inside.”  I readily admit that secretly, I have always felt like an outsider–like the funny little clown who cries on the inside:

Tomie dePaola was born in 1934. When Goldsboro sang about a clown who cried inside, dePaola was 30. I feel quite sure that he also saw himself in that song. When dePaola draws the junggling clown, he is painting a self-portrait.

I’ll say this over and over: Tomie dePaola’s books are authobiographical. DePaola was a memoir writer and artist. Often, you may need to dig a bit, but if you look closely enough, you will discover that through his work, he allows his readers to glean much about himself.

Today is another Memoir Monday, and again, I challenge you to look at yourself, as you seek the material for your next story. You might write about how a favorite teacher supported you as a child–or you might want to look at how you felt bullied by a teacher. Certainly, you might find a story within how you yourself felt bullied–or like an outsider. Following is a reading of the entire book The Art Lesson by Tomie dePaola. As you dig into this book, think about ways that you might harvest your own past to discover your next picture book. Click in the box below.