Like most kids, Matt Tavares drew pictures in elementary school, but since then, his grade-school passion has become his career.
The Maine-based children’s author and illustrator spoke at several South Colonie elementary schools last week, giving students lessons in adding depth to illustrations and having patience with writing. Students in grades kindergarten through fifth had the chance to gather in the libraries to ask the author questions and get books signed.
Tavares has authored 17 books since he began his career in 2000. Many of his authored books are baseball-themed, but he has also illustrated children’s biographies of Helen Keller, John F. Kennedy and a history of the Statue of Liberty.
In honor of his visit, Forest Park Elementary students and teachers dressed in favorite baseball paraphernalia.
“We do an author every year, so now (the students) are kind of like, who it is going to be this year?” said Forest Park Library Media Specialist Colleen Kuno. “They were really excited. Any time they can meet people who can do something cool like this, because in elementary school they’re still really excited about reading.”
Tavares showed Forest Park students the process behind getting his books ready to print, including editor notes on his manuscripts and the process behind getting the right illustration.
“By the time you guys come into the library here and see all these great books, hopefully they look really nice and all the mistakes have been fixed. But it takes a lot of work to get to that point,” said Tavares.
Tavares told fourth grade students that he and his editor sometimes send nearly 20 drafts back and fourth before the manuscript is perfect. It is the same for his illustrations, he said. His art director sometimes tells him to scrap a sketch altogether and start from the beginning.
“I need to be able to read through all my editor’s comments and not take it personally and not get upset about and not start thinking I must be a really bad writer,” Tavares told the students. “I just have to go back and try to make it better.”
For his nonfiction books, like his penned and illustrated biography “Becoming Babe Ruth,” Tavares said that research takes him months. He said he needed to find old photographs of Ruth’s Baltimore hometown in the 1920s and pictures of Ruth to be sure the hairstyle and uniform were accurate.
Students also saw how Tavares creates his illustrations. His new book, “Growing Up Pedro,” about Red Sox player Pedro Martinez, had illustrations based on Tavares’s trip to the Dominican Republic, where Martinez grew up.
In the Dominican Republic, Tavares met a boy who looked like a young Martinez and got the boy to pose as a baseball player. Tavares demonstrated his technique with Forest Park students, having them pose for a quick sketch and teach perspective to make a drawing look more real.
“A lot of drawing is just kind of this magic trick, where you’re trying to make this flat piece of paper look like it’s space, real space,” Tavares said.
Kuno said that Tavares’s visit had been anticipated for a few weeks. She said that students were especially excited with the rivalry between the Yankees and Red Sox, both teams that Tavares has written about.
For more information about Tavares’s books, go to www.matttavares.com.
