To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Children’s Book Week, C.H. Booth Library will host an art show by four local author-illustrators, with a panel discussion, on Sunday, May 5, at 2 pm. The special event will be presented in the Gathering Room of the library, 25 Main Street.

Bruce Degen, Paul Meisel, Ross MacDonald, and Jennifer Thermes are all planning to participate.

The program will focus on the process of creating a finished book, from the idea through the sketch phase to final art and published work. Each author-illustrator will show examples from one of their books and share tales of the complex journey it requires to produce one.

Bruce Degen is an illustrator and writer with more than forty children’s books to his credit. He may be known best for illustrating The Magic School Bus series written by Joanna Cole, a former Newtown resident.

After studying art in high school, college, and graduate school, the time came for Mr Degen to decide how he would earn a living as an artist.

“You don’t see many people walking around a gallery and chuckling,” he says. “And I realized that I wanted a chuckle. You can do a painting, and it might end up being on somebody’s wall, but if you do a book, it goes out to the world.”

Ross MacDonald’s illustrations have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly, Vanity Fair, and many other periodicals. He has written and illustrated several books for children and adults.

Mr MacDonald’s most recent children’s book is 7 Ate 9, written by Tara Lazar. He also creates props for movies and television.

Paul Meisel is the author and illustrator of two Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor Books: I See a Cat and See Me Run. His book My Awesome Summer by P. Mantis was a 2018 finalist for the AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for excellence in Science Books.

His follow-up book in the Nature Diary series, My Happy Year by E. Bluebird, was recently released, and he is currently working on the next book in the series, which is about stinkbugs.

Jennifer Thermes is a children’s book author, illustrator, and map illustrator. Her recent books include Grandma Gatewood Hikes The Appalachian Trail and Charles Darwin’s Around-The-World Adventure.

She is fascinated with the big picture of history and how we connect with it through time. Her forthcoming picture book, Manhattan: Mapping The Story Of An Island (Abrams, August 2019) is about the history, humans, and natural events that have shaped that tiny sliver of land for more than 400 years.

Art by the four participating residents will then remain on view at the library through May 18.