A Farmer’s Alphabet

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Mary Azarian

David R. Godine, Boston, MA, 2013, English

Nonfiction, Art and Cultural History

9 x 13 inches, paperback, 32 pages, 32 illustrations

ISBN: 9780879233976

Suggested Retail Price: $15.95

From the Publisher. Before she became a Caldecott medalist, Mary Azarian was a teacher in one of Vermont's last one-room schoolhouses. In the late 1970s, the state board of education commissioned her to create "a farmer's alphabet," a series of bold red-and-black woodcut prints featuring the 26 letters, A to Z, and depicting scenes from Vermont life. Now gathered in book form, printed in two colors on beautiful paper, these striking woodcuts give us a child's-eye view of rural New England – from Apple, Barn, and Cow to aX, Yawn, and Zinnia – a homey, large-as-life world that readers of every age will want to inhabit. No M for McDonalds in Azarian's world: only Maple Sugar. Mary Azarian grew up on a small farm in Virginia, where she had horses, rabbits and chickens. After graduating from Smith College, where she studied printmaking with Leonard Baskin, she married and moved to a farm in northern Vermont. There she taught for four years in one of the last one-room schoolhouses in the state. She has been a full-time printmaker since 1969. Her other books include The Tale of John Barleycorn, The Man Who Lived Alone, and the Caldecott Medal-winning Snowflake Bentley.

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