While pairing pictures with stories is a practice that has existed almost since humans began writing, it was not until 1658 that the first illustrated book specifically for children was written—Orbis Sensualim Pictus by John Comenius. While early picture books were almost entirely created for educational purposes, in 1866 Alice in Wonderland, written by Lewis Carroll with illustrations by John Tenniel, was published and truly opened up the world to the idea that children’s books with pictures could be works meant for entertainment and imagination. Since then, publishing children’s books has become a nearly three billion dollars a year industry in the U.S. alone. Breaking into the picture book market as a career can be hard to do, but one local artist has found success in a way she did not imagine when she first entered the art world. Alice Ratterree is an Upstate native, growing up in Spartanburg. She ventured outside the state for college, training to be a classical vocalist, and working primarily Drawing from The Wolf Keepers by Elise Broach
in the performing arts. However, after returning to Greenville, she found her calling not in music but in illustrating books for children. The first book for which she provided the illustrations is Lilliput by Sam Gayton. The book is primarily for middle school age children, and is inspired by the Lilliputians in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. In this book, Ratterree’s illustrations bring a fantastical sense of scale to the story of a tiny Lilliputian escaping London to return to her homeland. Her next work was for a young adult novel called The Wolf Keepers by Elise Broach which features more realistic illustrations which tell the story of a young girl who lives at a zoo in California and teams up with a runaway to solve the mysterious deaths of wolves in the zoo. Her most recent work, Dangerous Jane by Suzanne Slade, is aimed at a younger audience and is a biography of the pioneering social worker and activist Jane Addams.
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LIBRARY NOW // Spring/Summer 2020
