It was a dark snowy night in January. Our friend Susannah Richards had invited us to meet her at the Carle Museum, Amherst, MA. and we walked in as the last visitors were leaving. There is something really wonderful about being in a museum at night – a delicious feeling of being somewhere you are not meant to be.

The event we were attending was honouring Nick Clark, chief curator/founding member, who was retiring. As you’d expect, there were many writers and illustrators there, creators of extraordinary books such as these…

…so we were a little starstruck…

Michael with Wendell Minor

Tony Di Terlizzi, Carle Museum

Norton Juster (Photo © Susannah Richards)

with Jane Yolen

JoJo Le Poer (teacher) & Lynn Dobson (librarian) who helped us put names to faces and introduced us to people

David Johnson, Carle Museum

Susannah and Michael in a hipper than hip coffe place before the event

In between meeting famous writers and illustrators I had a peek at the exhibition on Madeline, Ludwig Bemelmans’ feisty wee heroine. It included loads of original art from the books, sketches, a first edition which belonged to the Kennedy’s, and two panel paintings which were commissioned for the Christina (Aristotle Onassis and Jackie O’s boat). Those little rows of yellow hats made me laugh aloud – a perfectly OK thing to do in a museum of picturebook art.

It was really hard to turn down a chance to go have dinner and hang out with some of these terrific writers and illustrators but we had to tear ourselves away for the three hour drive back to Ipswich through the snow. Thanks to Susannah for getting us an invitation to a night at the museum!