It Began With a Page: How Gyo Fujikawa Drew the Way, by Kyo Maclear, illustrated by Julie Morstad & Babies, by Gyo Fujikawa

 

When Gyo Fujikawa’s Babies was published in 1963, it felt to many parents like a quiet miracle. It was a sturdy book, tall and narrow, able to be held easily and read aloud to a young child in one’s lap. Read once, read twice, read three times in a row, it always brought a smile. The babies depicted were engaged in all the possible baby antics “oh, so busily.” They were bathed and had their diapers changed; they played, they were mischievous, and always they were “hugged and cuddled and loved.” But what made the book extra special was that babies of all races were gently, joyfully depicted: readers could see faces like theirs and their neighbors. Fujikawa was in the vanguard of children’s book creators who chose to portray children of color in everyday stories, as did Ezra Jack Keats in his classic The Snowy Day,

 

How did Gyo Fujikawa come to write and illustrate Babies? That story is told with enormous grace and liveliness in It Began With a Page: How Gyo Fujikawa Drew the Way, by Kyo Maclear, illustrated by Julie Morstad. Gyo was born in California, the child of immigrants from Japan. Her mother, a poet, and her father, a laborer, provided a home full of drawing materials and books where anything felt possible to Gyo. But the wider world of school and society did not feel hospitable, even when her family moved to the Japanese American community of San Pedro in southern California where her classmates in the high school, a ferry ride away, were mostly white. Her good fortune was to be noticed and supported by two teachers who encouraged her to go to art school for college. After that, Gyo spent a year in Japan absorbing Japanese cultural heritage and the wonderful creations of native print makers—but she found the customary teaching tools too restrictive. She began to create her own methods, returning to America to work as a muralist and graphic artist in New York. The tragedy of Japanese internment in 1942 separated her from her West Coast parents, and Gyo felt once again isolated in a world that regarded her as a stranger. She found solace in her art—bringing a blank page alive with drawings—while very aware of the civil rights activism surrounding her. She created a book that had black babies and white babies together, engaged in ordinary baby activities, not segregated. When a publisher said “No” to producing her book, Gyo “looked the publisher in the eye and said: ‘It shouldn’t be that way. Not out there on the streets. Not here on this page. We need to break the rules.’” And thus was born a book that helped seed an invaluable evolution in children’s book publishing: producing diverse books. Babies has itself has stood the test of time—translated into 17 languages and remaining bright, beautiful and beloved. Maclear and Morstad’s biographical picture book concludes with an intriguingly detailed timeline and engaging notes from the author and illustrator. Ages 4-9. HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2019.

   Grosset & Dunlap, 1963.