Serge Bloch Illustrator Extraordinaire

Serge Bloch is one of the most prolific illustrators working today. He is whimsical, inventive, and surprises you with every turn of the page. I first encountered Serge's work back in 1993 with his moving illustrations for Susie Morgenstern's Une vieille histoire. Serge's work is stunning and as the years pass he gets better and better.

I first exhibited Serge’s work in my 2010/2011 show Monsters and Miracles: A Journey Through Jewish Picture Books at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. That exhibit featured several original works by Maurice Sendak, Eric Carle, William Steig, the Reys, Simms Taback, Donald Sultan, Mordecai Gerstein, Nonny Hogrogian, Jill Pinkwater, Lisa Brown, Art Spiegelman and my dear friend Uri Shulevitz among others.

I produced the show with The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art and The Skirball Cultural Center.

Serge was also part of the panel organized for the show in LA with Caldecott Winner Mordecai Gerstein. It was a great experience. I later featured Serge in a workshop for adults and children at the St. Louis International Film Festival in partnership with Professor Gerald Early's Center for Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis. We are staging another children's workshop together at the Starz Denver Film Festival on November 4 in partnership with The Tattered Cover and the Arts Student League of Denver.

I am certain you have seen Serge's work. His illustrations appear frequently in The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, and Los Angeles Times, as well as Time and New York Magazine.

His children’s series Max and Lili sells 1.5 million copies a year and he has two children's TV shows, SamSam (created by some of the same folks who made the blockbuster Despicable Me) and Toto. SamSam is seen by over 200 million people worldwide.

Serge's book The Enemy was exhibited by the United Nations and Amnesty International. He has been honored with numerous distinctions including a Gold Medal by the Society of Illustrators in 2005, the Bologna Ragazzi award in 2007, as well as the Best Book Award in Taiwan in 2010.

He currently serves as Art Director for Bayard in Paris, France. Sterling (which is owned by Barnes and Noble) publishes a popular series by Serge that includes Butterflies in My Stomach and Other School Hazards and You Are What You Eat and Other Mealtime Hazards.

Serge also illustrated and designed the recent book by acclaimed comedian Steve Martin, The Tweets of Steve Martin, The Underwear Salesman by 2011 US Children's Poet Laureate J. Patrick Lewis and a new book with Kundo Koyama, script writer for the Oscar winning film Departure.

Serge's children's series Zouk was serialized in 2012 for Spider Magazine in the United States. Serge has illustrated hundreds of books worldwide.

Here are his websites, they are a great deal of fun:

http://www.sergebloch.net/blog/ and http://www.sergebloch.net

The Riddle of Cantinflas

University of New Mexico Press will release in December a revised and expanded edition of the classic Ilan Stavans book The Riddle of Cantinflas: Essays on Hispanic Popular Culture. The new edition of this work will include my dialogue with Ilan on the Mexican comic book industry.

Thank You Cinema St. Louis and Washington University

The 20th Annual Stella Artois St. Louis International Film Festival was amazing!!! Executive Director Cliff Froehlich and Artistic Director Chris Clark are some of the hardest working folks in the festival business and they know how to throw a great party. It was an honor to be back this year to curate and I am equally grateful to Gerald Early, Jian Leng and the rest of the team at the Center for Humanities at Washington University for supporting my events with Poco's Rusty Young and Jack Sundrud. Rusty and Jack played their hearts out at our Weston Woods Studios tribute. Their film scores sweep you off your feet. Jack and Rusty also treated audiences to some of their classic country rock hits both at the Tivoli and at Washington University. A big thank you also to Moonscoop in Paris for letting me screen Petit Vampire and New York-based publisher FirstSecond for providing us with several copies of the Little Vampire anthology for the kids. It was a great event and Gerald was an excellent MC for the evening. See you next year in St. Louis!

Simms Taback, Children's Book Author and National Treasure

I was saddened to hear the news that illustrator extraodinaire Simms Taback had passed away due to pancreatic cancer on December 25, 2011. Simms was a kind soul and a true gentleman. He was very supportive of my exhibition Monsters and Miracles. Simms loaned original pieces of artwork from both his Caldecott winner Joseph Had a Little Overcoat as well as his uproarious Kibbitzers and Fools for the show. Our family loves all his books and it was an honor to learn from Simms about his life and work. Simms sent me a copy of the original edition of Joseph Had a Little Overcoat along with other important background materials to help me flesh out my essay for the exhibition catalogue. I enjoyed speaking to him over the years from his home in California. Zichrono Livrachah - May his memory be a source of blessing.