ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 28, 1996 TAG: 9601260004
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 9 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: PROVIDENCE, R.I.
SOURCE: MICHAEL BEZDEK ASSOCIATED PRESS
The first glimpse of author-illustrator Chris Van Allsburg's house reveals a giant hedge that is almost as tall as his little front yard is wide.
It is a striking juxtaposition that continues inside, where the accents in his restored 1920s house include three steam locomotives, each about the size of a child's wagon. His bronze sculpture of the Titanic going down sits on a table, with a sculpture of the iceberg on the floor below.
But there is little evidence of the books and drawings that have made him famous in a field of thousands of artists and the winner of two Caldecott Medals, the highest award for children's illustration.
To be sure, his wonderful drawings are there - stacked willy-nilly behind a little door in his attic studio. What would be a treasure chest to millions of readers, collectors and art lovers, seems a pile of no particulars to him.
The only prominent item in the studio is his work table. It is another juxtaposition revealing of Chris Van Allsburg, a quiet man and reticent star who always has defined his personal favorite among his books as ``the next one.''
He has been successful since the late 1970s, but he has never been busier. Now fully in middle age, he has two young children, a new book out along with a 10th anniversary edition of his ever popular ``The Polar Express.'' Another book, ``Jumanji,'' has just been made into a movie starring Robin Williams. It's playing in Roanoke at the Grandin Theatre.
``Having a film of your book is a little like waiting for Santa Claus, but you're not sure if he's giving you an electric train or a piece of coal,'' said Van Allsburg, 46. ``I'm happy. I got an electric train, not the electric train I wanted maybe, but still an electric train.''
The ``Jumanji'' story, as Van Allsburg describes it, is one of the ``jungle perils in the house,'' and he naturally finds the movie most successful when it expands on the action of the book.
That action results when two bored children find a board game that comes to life, loosing rhinos, lions, monkeys and all kinds of things in their house.
It makes for plenty of action and special effects, the reason filmmakers probably turned to ``Jumanji'' of all the 14 Van Allsburg books.
``It gave them an opportunity to roll out the movie magic,'' he says.
Van Allsburg is not much concerned about the movie's viewers, but he does have some anticipation about the other emerging audience: his two daughters, Sophia, 4, and Anna, 6 months.
He already has brought Sophia into play in his latest book, ``A Bad Day at RiverBend.'' The idea for the work - the story of a coloring book - took shape after seeing what Sophia did with coloring pencils to a picture of Princess Summerfall Winterspring.
``It made me think of what they [people in coloring books] had to go through,'' he said.
Similar musings about a couple of ants in his kitchen led to ``Two Bad Ants,'' a story told from the view of the insects.
Often, though, the stories have little antecedent in fact. Thoughts of a train in a forest turned into the oil pastels of ``The Polar Express''; those of a ship that could fly became the Rembrandt pastel drawings of ``The Wreck of the Zephyr.''
His work reflects his life as an artist, lived somewhere a little out there, away from the encumbrances of the usual working world.
He majored in sculpture at the University of Michigan during the late 1960s and early '70s, and then got an MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design, had a few successful shows in New York and sold most of his sculpture.
He taught courses at the RISD for years because the relentless quiet of his studio made him want to be around people.
He began drawing again to fill time away from his sculpture studio, which was a good distance from his house. His last drawing phase had been as a kid when he copied cartoon characters and dazzled classmates with pictures of horses that really looked like horses.
He decided to draw and write, not really for children, but about whatever struck his unusual fancy.
A mysterious quality pervades the stories, and the scenes and people, often depicted as seen by the eye, but through sidelong glances or from the back. To read one of his books or look at his pictures leaves a lot to wonder about.
That might explain why he has so many adult fans, such as the college student who drove all the way from Michigan to find Van Allsburg and get him to sign his books, or the librarians who broke away from a conference to find his house.
His book ``The Z Was Zapped,'' an alphabet book in which the letters take a beating - the ``B'' gets bitten and the ``Q'' gets quartered - is considered by some parents to be a little too weird, even scary, for the biggest group of Van Allsburg fans, kids around 8-10 years old.
That is odd given the author is such a gentle soul that he carried his old cat for one mile when he moved into his new house, rather than have it suffer the trauma of a car ride, thinking it was headed for the vet.
From the first book in 1979, ``The Garden of Abdul Gasazi,'' he has been a commercial and critical success by doing whatever he felt like doing.
Yet his illustrations do not come easily, both because he was formally trained in sculpture and because the illustrations must depict things usually sprung wholly from his imagination.
``It's considerably easier to make a drawing from something that exists. A lot of my work takes time because I simply don't know what rhinos look like running through the house,'' he said.
Van Allsburg says he is happiest with the books that came easily to him, such as ``The Widow's Broom'' and ``The Polar Express,'' a Caldecott winner along with ``Jumanji'' and a perennial best seller around the holidays.
His next book will be a collaboration with writer Mark Helprin, a follow-up to their work on Swan Lake six years ago, for which they received an advance of more than $800,000, a sum previously unheard of in children's literature.
After that, he's not really sure.
``I like to leave things unresolved,'' he says of his work, and it also is probably true of his life.
He's free to go on creating and doing business his way, although his wife of 20 years, Lisa, has told him to keep all his illustrations now, and in a little better order. She rightly sees their historic value.
LENGTH: Long : 113 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Author.artist Chris Van Allsburg is a quiet man andby CNBreticent star who always has defined his personal favorite among his
books as "the next one."