Did you know that Brooks Library regularly shows the work of childrens’ book illustrators? The display case is on the second floor across from the Children’s Room. Stop by and check it out!
For the month of May, there will be some beautiful original sketches and watercolors from the book “Did Tiger Take the Rain?” by Charles Norris-Brown. Please take a moment to read his brief bio and statement below!
Dish washer, bus driver, teacher, theoretician, and artist, Charles Norris-Brown was born in the small northern Pennsylvania town of Warren. He completed a PhD degree in Social Anthropology and Sociology at Lund University, Sweden, in 1984, based on fieldwork in the inner hills of Uttarakhand, India.
By 1990, Charles had re-focused his work to look at small communities living in and dependent on forests. This took him from the rainforest of Borneo to poor communities in eastern Canada and the Appalachian region of the USA. Part of this new focus included the terai region of India.
While visiting the Corbett National Park in India as part of a planned applied research project, and on the recommendation of some villagers there, he decided to combine his art, anthropology, and concern for the environment and to focus on writing
and illustrating children’s books. He began by completing an on-line course with the Institute of Children’s Literature in 2005. In time, he would raise the funds to allow his return to the terai, this time to Nepal, and from visits to the western terai region of Nepal in 2011 and 2012, he developed what would become his first children’s book: Did Tiger Take the Rain?
