Noted Children's Author/Illustrator to Speak at UWM

Rosemary Wells, a well-known children’s book author and illustrator, will speak at UWM’s School of Information Studies Monday, Feb. 14 at 5:30 p.m. in the UWM Union, 2200 E. Kenwood Blvd.

Wells has written more than 60 books in a career spanning 30 years. She is noted for two large, definitive editions of Mother Goose, but has won numerous awards for her other books.

Her books focus on simple stories for toddlers and early readers, illustrated with cheerful drawings of her popular characters Max and Ruby, Noisy Nora and Yoko. Recent books include “Ruby’s Beauty Shop,” “Max Drives Away,” and “Ruby’s Tea for Two.”

Wells was born in New York and grew up on the New Jersey shore. Her mother was a dancer in the Russian ballet and her father a playwright, she says on her Web site.

“When I was two years old, I began to draw and they saw right away the career that lay ahead of me and encouraged me every day of my life. As far back as I can remember, I did nothing but draw.”

Most of her books use animal characters rather than children.

“I draw animals more easily and amusingly than I do children,” she writes. “Animals are broader in range—age, time and place—than children are. They can do things in pictures that children cannot. They can be slapstick and still real, rough and still funny, maudlin and still touching.”

Here lecture is co-sponsored by HarperCollins Children’s Books.