Floral embroidery would influence her later work as an artist. When the Swedish Red Cross rescued Lobel and her younger brother from a Nazi concentration camp in Poland, she learned handwork from Swedish nurses and delighted in knitting and embroidering flowers. As a young child in Poland she finger wove chains of flowers and wreaths for her hair. Her fondness for flowers emerged from childhood experiences first in her native Poland and then in Sweden. Lobel’s cat Nini, is featured in several of her books. The flowers in her books are artistic abstractions or literary plants not literal ones. Does someone who draws and paints flowers also grow a garden? Lobel maintains she is a ‘picture maker’ not a gardener. Flowers are found decorating curtains and draperies ( Al l the World’s a Stage), growing in a garden ( A Rose in My Garden), woven into a babushka and shawl ( Potatoes, Potatoes), etched on bed frames ( Lena’s Sleep Sheep), camouflaging a cat ( Nini Lost and Found), and embossed on a ceramic cookie jar ( Taking Care of Mama Rabbit). Lobel has accrued a gallery of flowers in over 60 books. In the alphabet book, Al ison’s Zinnia, girls, verbs, and flowers form an alliterative floral chain. One thread running through the pages of Lobel’s picture and concept books is flowers. Anita Lobel, wellknown author and illustrator of children’s books was in Columbia this summer for the Children’s Literature Association Conference hosted by the University of South Carolina.
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