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Ashley Bryan: Enigmatic Educator
| Article
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15871 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1989 |
2,104 Words |
| Author
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Jon Laitin
Jon Laitin is a free-lance writer, photographer, and editor
living in Thorndike, Maine. |
First-time visitors to the island home of Ashley Bryan step across the threshold of the fourth dimension into a world of children's dreams. Little bears on bicycles holding balance bars perform on high wires. A menagerie of handmade dolls, stuffed animals, and puppets are poised to spring into action at the stroke of midnight. Wooden horseback riders patiently wait for nimble fingers to set them in motion.
"Have I wandered into a museum gift shop?" the caller wonders, while trying to regain his equilibrium.
"You can decorate your house, if you like, with pictures, with bicycle tires, with hubcaps, whatever," explains Bryan. "I happen to like these things, and they make up my environment."
Who is Ashley Bryan? The childlike furnishings in his home on the Maine island of Islesford, better known to local residents as Little Cranberry, are as enigmatic as the man himself. While he is best known as an author and illustrator of children's books, the interests and talents of this Renaissance man go well beyond a narrow field of specialization.
Bryan is a painter, craftsman, teacher, storyteller, musicologist, linguist, philosopher, and more. He has been an art professor at Queens College in New York City and at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Bryan travels throughout the United States lecturing on the art of giving life to the written word by reading aloud. His own published stories are sensitive and well-researched interpretations of African folktales.
"I work with the black American poets because they are a direct connection to what I'm doing with the African folktales. I take the devices of poetry, the play of the voice, the rhythm, the onomatopoeia, the alliteration, the syncopation, and apply them to may prose," Bryan explains.
His efforts have not gone unnoticed. Bryan's large collection of keys to various cities and awards, the most notable of which is the Coretta Scott King Award for his book Beat the Story Drum, Pum-Pum, is only rivaled in number by his playthings. His publisher schedules his presentations to teachers, librarians, and schoolchildren a year in advance. Every summer he is inundated with visitors, young and old alike, who know of him from his books and public appearances.
Despite his intense interest in
...
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