The Wordy Book

What happens when words and pictures coexist, bump into one another, are in constant conversations? How might words paint a bird, while that very bird sings the words themselves? This book invites readers to participate in a vibrant celebration of language itself.

With surrealist paintings bursting with words, bright colors, and unexpected juxtapositions, this book explores how playing with a word’s sound, form, and context can shape its meaning. Each painting asks a question, which can be answered with the words and pictures that make up the image, or with the reader’s own words. Playfully expressive, this celebration of the imagination will give its readers a newfound appreciation for the richness, beauty, and vitality of language.

Julie Paschkis was born in Pennsylvania and attended Germantown Friends School, Ringerike Folkehogskole in Norway, Cornell University and the School for American Craftsmen at RIT. She taught art to grade school children for about 8 years. During that time she continued to work on her own art and illustration. In 1991 she stopped teaching to commit herself to doing art full time. That art includes painting, illustration, and illustrating children's books. All of it is connected to storytelling. Julie has published nearly 25 children's picture books, including a much acclaimed one about the poet Pablo Neruda. The Wordy Book is a book of gorgeous word painting on which Julie has worked for many years. It celebrates the imagination and the playful expressiveness, the sheer richness and beauty of language. Julie lives in Seattle, WA with her family and community.

 “Some children’s books feel like classics the first time one encounters them. It’s not hard to imagine young poets embracing The Wordy Book as warmly as new generations keep embracing The Little Prince.” ―Naomi Shihab Nye, for the New York Times

"This gorgeously illustrated book is full of words waiting to be discovered! Snuggle up and get ready to spend hours reading and re-reading this dreamy, mesmerizing book, where art and literature go hand in hand." --Kate Towery, Fountain Bookstore (Richmond, VA)

"Devoted to the tricks and beauties of the English language, The Wordy Book, by Julie Paschkis, has lush illustrations and an enigmatic text that would be useful for sparking conversation at bedtime with anyone over perhaps the age of 4 or 5. 'When does there become here?' Ms. Paschkis asks. 'What tells me more--an if or an or?' These posers are accompanied by richly colored folkloric pictures, many with words woven into their patterns. The question 'Do you see what I see?' runs beside a painting of a white vase--or is it the space between two silhouetted faces?--with flowers whose petals and leaves are decorated with words such as 'happy/sappy/zippy' and 'worry/flurry/fury.' The strangeness is part of the beauty; the beauty is in the strangeness."-- Wall Street Journal