The biography bug hasn't hit me yet; I'm still a fiction gal. But I like to peruse biographies every now and then to see if I've developed a taste for the genre. I recently pored over Linda Lear's Beatrix Potter biography. Titled Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature. I didn't read all of it, but enough to know that Lear is an interesting writer and a solid researcher. I was most fascinated by how much of Potter's life was spend studying and observing and drawing animals---Potter paid the price for her ability to draw creatures and make them life-like and fantastic at the same time. I think we miss some of that now---it's not in our culture for people to take time to "just" draw and watch. Pity. I think we're missing something.
So then the biography led me, of course, to Potter's fictional children's stories. I knew she wrote Peter Rabbit, but I had not met Timmy Tippytoes or Jemima Puddleduck or Duchess the Dog. These books are adorable! I'm going to put them on my Amazon.com wishlist and collect a bunch. They are not flashy (think: not David Shannon, whose work I adore). They are clever and charming. If you don't want to read the biography, at least venture into some of Beatrix Potter's lesser known fiction. It will delight both the child and the adult in you.
(But Liz, check out the biography. I think you'll like it.)
1 comment:
Oh, I love Miss Potter. You have seen that haven't you? I need to read this one. I saw a review of it in Newsweek about two years go and never did anything about it. I didn't know that she was such a conservationist until I saw Miss Potter.
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