As long as I can remember, I have done my own version of author studies. Even as a child, one of the ways that I chose books was to read something else by the same author I'd just read and loved. I figured that's what everybody did. Even now as I teach courses in Children's Literature at the university level, I figure that my students know and love certain authors. Sometimes of course, they do. But all too often, they have no idea who wrote the book they just finished. Although a book may have touched them so deeply they cried or tickled them so much they read half of it aloud to someone, they frequently don't know who wrote it. Readers may know titles of books or vague plots. "You know that book about the little caterpillar?" they ask you. Or they may know a book by its color -- "You know, that red book with the black and white drawings of a bull?" But they need to know authors. Teachers, especially, need to fall in love with writers through their books, so that they in turn can help children fall in love with books.

Increasingly, teachers are trying to encourage their students to think like writers. One way to accomplish that goal is by exploring authors or illustrators through a ritual which celebrates an "author of the week" or "author of the month" An author or illustrator study shouldn't entail doing activities about books that, at best, have some tenuous link to the content of that book, but rather it should thoroughly engage the reader to get at the heart of what the writer is trying to do. The books themselves and information about the author become bridges upon which readers develop understanding of what it means to be a writer.

One extraordinary author and illustrator to highlight and study is Anno, a prolific artist from Japan whose work became familiar outside of his native country in the 1970s. While teachers or librarians may want to delve into the work of Anno prior to introducing his work to their students, they can just as well explore Anno with their students, making discoveries alongside them. Adults and children alike will develop an appreciation through an in-depth look that they may miss in a casual perusal of Anno's books. When a class or group begins an author study, they are in a sense, on a journey.

What follows is a tentative itinerary for that journey. Although enumerated in steps, I don't conceptualize this plan as a recipe but as a map to chart undiscovered territory, the delightful work of Mitsumasa Anno.

Read one of Anno's books to the students each day. The books will provoke enlightening discussion providing a model of how to read Anno's work, that is looking for symbols, reading between the lines, and examining the pictures.

Have as many of Anno's books available as possible (multiple copies, if feasible) and let students discover the books.

What will immediately become evident is that Anno has distinct bodies of work, as most artists do. There are travel books - Anno's Journey (1977), Anno's Italy (1980), Anno's Britain (1981), and Anno's USA (1983), alphabet books - Anno's Alphabet: An Adventure in Imagination (1975) and Anno's Magical ABC: An Anamorphic Alphabet (1981) and math books - Anno's Counting Book (1977), Anno's Counting House (1982), Anno's Mysterious Multiplying Jar (1983), Anno's Hat Tricks (1985) Math Games I (1987), Math Games II (1989), and Math Games III (1991). There are puzzle books (conceptually linked with the math books) Upside Downers: Pictures to Stretch the Imagination (1988) and Topsy-Turvies: More Pictures to Stretch the Imagination (1989) and there are story books - The King's Flower(1978) and In Shadowland (1988). As is often the case with Anno, some of his work defies categorization. Anno's Medieval World (1980) is a journey through time, telling the story of the scientific evolution from Ptolemaic to Copernican theory. It clearly combines storytelling, history, science, and math. The Unique World of Mitsumasa Anno (1980) couples art with quotations and yet does far more than have art illustrate the text or the quote illuminate the art. Words and images are juxtaposed so as to jog readers' minds to create their own meaning. All in a Day (1986) is an entreaty for peace. With nine international illustrators, Anno depicts what children all over the world are doing on January 1st.

Go beyond a cursory look at Anno's books by giving the students sufficient opportunity to truly examine the books and to interact with each other as they do so.

Anno's books make demands on readers that many other books do not. The books do not tell a simple straightforward story or provide puzzles with one answer. As teachers, we may begin by sharing some of our own ideas regarding a specific book and then inviting the students' observations and thoughts. As Baskin and Harris(1980) acknowledged, a child's traditional mode of response to looking at picture books is inadequate for books by Anno.

Because of the importance of social interaction in learning, students should be afforded the chance to work in groups as they launch into a detailed study. Anno's books demand conversation, the chance to proclaim, "Oh, look at this," "Did you see that?" There is joy in finding, pointing out, knowing and noticing - be it visual metaphors, cultural and historical allusions, or mathematical principles. There is the same eagerness to share as we all have when we go to a museum or take a trip. Reading and looking at books by Anno is, in fact, not unlike a jaunt to a museum or a sightseeing trip. The reader's role becomes both adventurer and tourist.

Decide whether students will choose one body of work that they want to thoroughly explore (e.g. travel books or math books) or choose one book in each body of work, thus garnering a more complete picture of the breadth of the work of this gifted author/illustrator. Readers will take the trip in different ways.

Watch your students as they look at the journey books, listen to their comments, and pique their interest by sharing a few of your own observations. Have resources available such as encyclopedias, art history books and some of the literature to which Anno alludes.

Although some children will want only to find the lone traveler in garb reminiscent of Robin Hood (just as they search for Waldo), many children with the shared enthusiasm of an adult or a group of peers will spend hours poring over the pictures in search of the familiar and the hidden. Some readers truly are adventurers and want to take the unguided 7-day cruise staying on each page for a long time, knowing that there are pearls in the oysters if only they'll look hard enough. Others, impatient, will opt for a quick cruise. You might want to give a guided tour for those readers who've acquired the Where's Waldo syndrome.

To encourage students to find more than just the man on the horse, alert readers to the list of things to find, disguised as an afterword. The books, however, provide only a few clues, leaving the major work of the traveler to each reader. For students unfamiliar with many of the cultural allusions, you can easily renew interest in the search by sharing a reproduction of An American Gothic, for instance, and then pointing out the allusion in Anno's USA. For students (and teachers) who would like a longer list of what's embedded in the illustrations, a list of additional things that "travelers" can look for is included at the end of this article.

Join in with your students in the mathematical play that is woven throughout so many of Anno's books.

Indeed Anno (1991) himself says that "children move forward ... by playing, a much more enjoyable way to learn, as befits their ages"(p. 98). Experiment with drawing with dots as shown in Math Games II. Explore topology, a branch of mathematics that investigates the properties of a geometric configuration, and toy with the transformation of the shapes of objects, as Anno explores it in "changing shapes with magic liquid"(Math Games III). Using an overhead projector, show students how to create an anamorphic drawing, a distorted image that requires the viewer to see from a different perspective. Anno not only describes the process in Anno's Magical ABC but also provides graphs to encourage his readers to try it. Invite students to do their own anamorphic drawings and compile their pieces into a class book. Try out the paper folding in Math Games III. Displaying the students' creations in the library along with Anno's Math Games may even entice other students to discover Anno's books.

After students have had time to revel in the exploration of Anno's work, brainstorm what they notice about Anno's style as both a writer and an illustrator. What is he trying to do? What is he saying to his readers?

Anno's greatest desire seems to be that readers discover, explore, and stretch their imaginations, and he virtually states as much in the postscript of Topsy-Turvies. "I have purposely added no words to these... pictures of mine, so you can make them mean whatever you want them to mean....Perhaps these pictures...will keep all of us young a little longer, will stretch our imaginations enough to help keep us magically human"(Anno, 1989, p. 28)

Anno writes and draws with a playful, whimsical tone. He invites his readers to take on different roles, be it naming things, solving puzzles, daydreaming, or storytelling. Much of what Anno hopes to do as a writer and artist, he states plainly "When we consider two things together, we realize that this strange thing called a relationship binds them together"(Anno, 1989, p. 98). Anno can enlighten readers to make new connections, and because he invites readers to look for relationships, his books engender imaginative problem solving.

With openendedness as a hallmark of his work, Anno makes books that readers must complete with their own understanding. He affords readers the chance to gradually recognize without being told what's going on in his books. For example, in Anno's Counting Book readers come to realize that objects are represented in sets and that the numbers represent the months of the year which unfold for readers as they read and observe. Anno also gives the reader visual metaphors, as in Anno's Alphabet. Through picturing first a blossoming tree, then a stump, and then the letters carved from wood, he portrays language as a living thing. Anno's books transcend cultural and social differences, revealing the universality of human interest.

Look up something about Anno as a person. Where did he grow up? How did his life experience color his work? Valuable resources for finding out a lot about both Anno and his books are the Children's Literature Review : Excerpts from Reviews, Criticism, and Commentary on Books for Children & Young People and Something About the Author: Facts and Pictures about Authors and Illustrators of Books for Young People.

Anno grew up in Japan and for ten years was an art teacher in elementary school. He claims that the teaching-learning process is a reciprocal one. "As a teacher," he says, "I tried to present material to pupils so that they could widen their scope of understanding and self-expression. At the same time I learned a lot from them"(Aoki, 1983, p. 139).

"Because my world was cut off from the outside world, first by the mountains and then by the ocean," he told an interviewer, "the desire to go and see what lay on the other side grew stronger" (Aoki, 1983. p. 137). His initial journey beyond Japan took him to Europe, mainly Scandinavia, England, and Germany. When he took his trip through the United States, he traveled by car from Boston to New York to Washington, Williamsburg, Atlanta, New Orleans, Albuquerque, and St. Louis. Anno writes, "My purpose for traveling was not merely to see more of the world but to get lost in it. I did often get lost and faced many difficulties, but under such circumstances, there were always unexpected discoveries and interesting experiences waiting for me"(Aoki, 1983, p. 141). "By the end of my journey, I realized that I had set out not to collect information but to lose my way - and to discover the world .... It is a world filled with variety, yet a simple place with a deep-rooted sense of culture, an appreciation of nature that preserves it from destruction and pollution. It is a beautiful world." (Anno, 1977, afterword).

Of his travels Anno writes, "it seems that although languages, alphabets and customs are different in the various parts of the world, there are no differences at all in our hearts, especially when we are shedding tears at parting. What trifles the formal differences are, when you think of what our hearts have in common!

The laws of physics and nature are universal, as are the principles of plant and animal life throughout the world. Among living creatures, more things are shared than are different"(Anno, 1980c, afterword). Clearly, Anno's life and work are closely linked which becomes apparent through reading his books.

His books demand a great deal of the reader. Think about what Anno had to know in order to create his books.

With a wealth of knowledge regarding cultural literacy, history, geography, literature, art, music, and popular culture, Anno juxtaposes historical periods with literary and cultural allusions. He explores and exploits principles of specific disciplines of science and math, translating abstract principles into visual entities, playing tricks with laws of gravity and distorting perspective. He has mastered techniques of painting with watercolor and ink. He also utilizes the artistic technique, trompe l'oeil painting, a technique in which drawings of objects spring to life.

Since Anno himself recognizes the influence that other artists have had on his work (Anno, 1980a), gather resources of surrealist artists Escher, Magritte, and Dali and of the Japanese masters Hokusai and Hirishige so that students can compare and contrast them.

Share with the students Dinner With Magritte, (Garland, 1995 ) a picture book that tells of a young boy who visits his spirited neighbors, Rene Magritte and his wife and their artist friend Salvador Dali. Cleverly, Michael Garland, conveys that surrealist artists paint not what they see but what is in the mind's eye.

Since much of surrealist art is too sensual in nature and not appropriate for children, you may want to make color overheads of representative pieces that demonstrate the influence on Anno's work e.g. Magritte's painting "Personal Value"(Meuris, 1988), a piece which shows juxtaposition of strange objects and a disregard for scale. Students can compare and contrast the style, content, and color of Magritte's work with Anno's paintings in The Unique World of Mitsumasa Anno.

Although Anno is not an imitator, his distortion of perspective and use of mathematical puzzles is reminiscent of Escher. He is like Escher in his fascination with geometry and optical illusions and unlike Escher in that he is not interested in unusual shapes that tessellate (Anno, 1980a). Particularly interesting to compare are Anno's drawings in Topsy Turvies and Upside Downers and Escher's (1971) etching entitled "Relativity," both of which show staircases which trick the eye.

Reviewers (Senick & Hug, 1988) have also noted similarities and influences of Japanese artists. Anno's skill with figures and landscapes is reminiscent of the Japanese masters Hokusai and Hiroshige. Students will note the use of delicate watercolors and ink and the similarity in composition and form.

Arrange Anno's books in the order in which he published them (according to the copyright date) enabling readers to take a look at how the work changed.

In what way has Anno's work developed or evolved?

Indeed the journey that you and your students take together through the work of Mitsumasa Anno will be both pleasurable and challenging.

The Travelers' Landmarks

Below is a list of additional things that "travelers" can look for, compiled both from what many reviewers have acknowledged and from what my students and I have found.

Anno's Journey

•In ongoing sequences, several stories unfold:

courtship(from a woman primping in a window to the wedding), a foot race during which a racer is admonished to get back on the road, a duel, a family packing up and moving

•Busy people -

children playing. Games and activities shown include throwing quoits or ring toss, ping pong, chase or tag, rolling a hoop, basketball, go carts, hop scotch, sailing boats, jumprope, ring around the rosie, sliding, high jump

adults working. The occupations shown include roofer, barrel maker, house painter, barber, baker, artist, magician, waiter, logger, postman, grave digger, woodcutter, wash woman, milkmaid, grape picker, flower vendor, sheep shearer, proprietor of tobacco shop

•places, events, and daily activity: a man mailing a letter, postman delivering mail (recurrent), bathers, tourists, a street market, a fair, a parade in which Sesame Street characters mingle with traditional marchers. a funeral, a bird in a cage and then escaping from the cage, and a not-so-everyday activity, a prisoner escaping

•allusions to art and music: Details from old masters' paintings - Van Gogh's Bridge at Arles, Millet's Reapers, Seurat's Sunday in the Park with George, reproduction of "The Angelus," Renoir, Beethoven in window, musical phrase, opening bars of Beethoven's 9th on a shop sign

•literary allusions: Don Quixote. Sancho Panza, and the windmill; story book characters - Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks, Pied Piper, Aesop's fable of the dog looking at his reflection, a folk tale in action - The Great Big Enormous Turnip

•Visual jokes: clock with compass hands, a statue, Anno on his horse, being led off its pedestal, the children throwing ring toss or quoits onto a steeple, men carrying a turret

Anno's Britain - A first look reveals plain folk going about their business in the countryside of England, Scotland and Wales; more careful scrutiny however, reveals past and present heroes of British history and Britain's art and folklore.

•Places: white cliffs of Dover, Stonehenge, Canterbury,Tower of London, royal observatory, stonemasons building a castle

•People: Robin Hood, Isaac Newton, Queen Elizabeth II, The Beatles, King Alfred in Winchester

•literary allusions: TomTom the piper's son on his stolen pig, Alice, Peter Pan and Tinkerbell, Bottom, the weaver and the Queen from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, Mother Goose characters, Willy Lott's cottage

Anno's Italy

•We know we're in for an interesting tour, when as one reviewer notes that in a single picture, we see "a charming Tuscan landscape, its verisimilitude unruffled by presence of biblical shepherds; Adam and Eve being expelled from Eden (a la Michelangelo),the Virgin Mary being visited by the Angel of the Annunciation (as picture by Fran Angelico),Tarzan swinging through the trees, a witch nonchalantly riding her broomstick, and a fairy tale wolf on the prowl,"(Senick and Hug, 1988 p. 37).

• people: St. Francis of Assisi, balloon in one hand, lark in the other, John the Baptist,

•places: Rome, Florence, Venice, Brunellesco's cathedral, Giotto's bell tower in Florence.

•events of daily life: bicycling paperboy delivering morning paper, haughty Renaissance grande dame receiving admiring glances from men in modern garb

•artistic allusions: Renaissance masterpieces of Leonardo's The Last Supper, Boticelli's Three Graces, the crucifixion, Adam and Eve being expelled from Eden (a la Michelangelo),the Virgin Mary being visited by the Angel of the Annunciation (Fra Angelico), the Babe in the Manger

•literary allusions: Pinnochio pursued by an irate Gepeto, the three little pigs, Cinderella, Lewis Carroll's white rabbit consulting his watch, Aesop's tortoise outrunning the hare, Shylock about to exact his pound of flesh, Rapunzel letting down hair , Tarzan

•visual jokes - a dachshund whose head appears at one side of building and his tail at the other

Anno's USA -

•people: Paul Revere, arm upraised, Ben Franklin flying his kite, Columbus' crew arriving on Santa Maria, Wright brothers in their plane somewhere in Arizona, Charlie Chaplin

•Places and landmarks: colonial Williamsburg, great American desert, the capitol, Philadelphia's Independence Hall, midtown Manhattan, Washington D.C., lions of the NY Public library on a parade float, Early Ford cars

•artistic allusions: Whistler's mother on her rocking chair in a cotton field

•literary allusions: policeman and ducks from Robert McCloskey's classic Make way for Ducklings, Little Orphan Annie with Daddy Warbucks and her dog Sandy,

Tom Sawyer painting the fence, Hester Prynne with her scarlet letter painted on bodice of her dress standing among folks in village green

•popular culture: comedians Laurel and Hardy moving a piano down a colonial Boston street, characters from Sesame Street

Anno's Medieval World

flat earth inhabited by people who believe in witchcraft and alchemy

earth becoming curved, then semi-circular, then global

discoveries of microscope, telescope, navigational instruments

Anno, M. (1975). Anno's alphabet: An adventure in imagination. Philomel: New York.

From the beginning of the book, the reader is engaged in a visual metaphor of language as a living thing. The blossoming tree is chopped down and letters are carved -- but often in ways that would truly be impossible. The borders, as well as the large illustrations, picture things beginning with each letter.

Anno, M. (1975). Anno's counting book. Thomas Y. Crowell Co.: New York.

In this ingenious counting book, which includes zero a town grows from nothing to one house, one tree, one person to twelve buildings, twelve trees, twelve people. Children can learn counting, one-to-one correspondence and set theory.

Anno, M. (1977). Anno's journey. Philomel: New York.

In this wordless picture book Anno records in drawings his journey through northern Europe and his impressions of the land, the people at work and play, and their art, architecture, folklore, and fairy tales.

Anno, M. (1978). The king's flower. Collins: New York.

A king who had to have everything bigger and better than anyone else discovers, the hard way, that bigger isn't always better.

Anno, M. (1980a). The unique world of Mitsumasa Anno: selected works (1968-1977). Philomel: New York.

Anno's paintings and graphics are coupled with captions from works of literature, science and philosophy. The captions, however, do not explain the art but rather provoke the reader to find a link or connection between image and words.

Anno, M. (1980b). Anno's medieval world. Collins: New York.

A journey through time, this book tells the story of the scientific evolution from Ptolemaic to Copernican theory. It clearly combines storytelling, history, science, and math.

Anno, M. (1980c). Anno's Italy. Collins: New York.

In wordless scenarios, Anno populates the Italian landscape with people, from Renaissance masterpieces, sights in famous cities, and folk characters common to all cultures.

Anno, M. (1981). Anno's Britain. Philomel: New York.

A first look reveals plain folk going bout their business in the countryside of England, Scotland, and Wales, but more careful scrutiny reveals past and present heroes of British history, Britain's art, and folklore.

Anno, M. & Anno, M. (1981). Anno's magical ABC: an anamorphic alphabet. Philomel: New York.

This double alphabet book (one in upper case, one, lower case) introduces far more than the letters of alphabet. Drawings and letters are rendered in an intriguing art form called anamorphic art - producing figures which can be seen in correct proportion only in a curved mirror.

Anno, M. (1982). Anno's counting house. Philomel: New York.

Two shapes of houses, two sets of people moving in and moving out. Readers are challenged to count and keep track of who lives where.

Anno, M. (1983). Anno's USA. Philomel: New York.

In wordless panoramas, a lone traveler approaches the New World from the West in the present day and journeys the width of the country backward through time, departing the east coast as the Santa Maria appears over the horizon.

Anno, M. & Anno, M. (1983). Anno's Mysterious Multiplying Jar. Philomel: NY

With beautiful art, Anno explores the notion of factorials -- perhaps making the concept more complex than it has to be.

Anno, M. (1986). All in a day. Philomel: New York.

In a plea for peace, nine international illustrators depict what children, the world over, are doing on January 1st. Clearly Anno wants to celebrate commonality more than recognizing differences among cultures.

Anno, M. (1987). Anno's math games. Philomel: New York.

Picture puzzles, games, and simple activities introduce the mathematical concepts of abstract thinking, circuitry, geometry, and topology.

Anno, M. (1988a). Upside-downers. Philomel: New York.

Figures from two sets of playing cards, each of which seems upside down to the other, pursue their quacky quarreling until one of the kings points out that it is all a matter of point of view.

Anno, M. (1988b). In shadowland. Orchard: New York.

Chaos descends on Shadowland when the watchman leaves his post to join a little match girl on a snowy street in the real world.

Anno, M. (1989). Anno's math games II. Philomel: New York.

Picture puzzles, games, and simple activities introduce the mathematical concepts of multiplication, sequence, ordinal numbering, measurement, and direction.

Anno, M. (1989). Topsy-turvies: More pictures to stretch the imagination. Philomel: New York.

Optical illusions form structures in which curious little men can go up stairs to get to a lower place, hang pictures on the ceiling, and walk on walls.

Anno, M. (1991). Anno's math games III. Philomel: New York.

Picture puzzles, games, and simple activities introduce the mathematical concepts of topology, measurement, and geometry.

Garland, M. (1995). Dinner at Magritte's. Dutton Children's Books: New York.

A young boy visits his spirited neighbors, Rene Magritte and his wife and their artist friend Salvador Dali and is in for an interesting evening. Along with the story, Michael Garland, cleverly conveys that surrealist artists paint not what they see but what is in the mind's eye.

Nozaki, A. (1985). Anno's Hat Tricks. illustrated by Mitsumasa Anno. Philomel Books: New York.

Three children, Tom, Hannah, and Shadowchild (who represents the reader), are made to guess using the concept of binary logic the color of the hats on their heads. This book introduces children to logical thinking and mathematical problem solving.

Aoki, H. (1983). "A conversation with Mitsumasa Anno," in The Horn Book 59:2 pp. 137 - 145.

Baskin, B. H. & Harris, K. H. (1980). Books for the gifted child. R.R. Bowker: New York.

Escher, M.C. (1967.) The graphic work of M. C. Escher. Ballantine Books: New York.

Hiroshige (1965). The fifty-three stages of the tokaido. East-West Center Press: Honolulu, Hawaii.

Hokusai (1966). The thirty-six views of Mount Fuji. East-West Center Press: Honolulu, Hawaii.

Meuris, J. (1988). Rene Magritte. The Overlook Press: Woodstock, New York.

Senick, G.J. & Hug, M.R. (1988). Children's literature review: Excerpts from reviews, criticism, a commentary on books for children and young people. "Mitsumasa Anno ," Vol. 14 pp. 23 - 45. Gale Research Co.: Detroit, MI.