Filed Under: "Sherwood Walks Home"

Detail, Sherwood Walks Home, Flora’s eighth children’s book, 1966. We won’t reveal the outcome, but we suspect the cat is the most determined diner.

Tempera illustration from Sherwood Walks Home (1966), part of the James Flora Papers in the Kerlan children’s literature collection at the University of Minnesota. A chapter in our forthcoming Flora book will be devoted to images from the collection (the above is not included) and a profile of Dr. Irvin Kerlan, patron saint of tot-lit. We’ve previously posted several drafts and sketches discovered in the Kerlan vaults.

We’ve finally collected an online gallery of Flora’s 20 children’s books (17 of which he authored). They’re up for viewing at JimFloraArt.com, the Flora family website. While you’re there, the site has had a makeover and includes three pages of original Flora art from the 1990s that’s being offered for sale.

Not quite hot on the heels of The Mischievous Art and The Curiously Sinister Art, Barbara and I are now compiling a third volume of Floriana. Tentatively titled The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora, the book will be published by Fantagraphics in July or August 2009. Designer Laura Lindgren will once again transform our loosely organized text and Flora’s genial monstrosities into a tight, 180-page coffeetable bouquet. Over the next year, this blog will…