Joseph Mugnaini, illustrator

I know I'm a little late, but I just wanted to share some thoughts I've had the past few weeks in light of the season.  I've begun to develop a few Halloween traditions of my own in the past few years.  I've realized that no Halloween is complete without a quick reading of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving (I especially love this edition for the American folk-art style of Will Moses' illustrations, great grandson of Grandma Moses), and a visit to Disneyland to look at the Halloween Tree in Frontier Land.  It is a tribute to Ray Bradbury (who wrote the children's book The Halloween Tree) and his long-time illustrator Joseph Mugnaini.


This year I thought I'd re-read the book since it's been many years since the first time I read it.  Not only was I enchanted with Bradbury's writing all over again, but I had forgotten just how captivating Mugnaini's simple line drawings truly are.  At the beginning of each chapter in the book, Mugnaini drew a little face, no two exactly the same.  Now that I've seen his work again, I'm tempted to try my hand at embroidering some of these little faces into a Halloween sampler, or possibly framing each one in an embroidery hoop and hanging a collage of hoops on one wall.  Can you imagine how great these faces would look embroidered onto colored fabric, maybe a grey or orange background?

Ahhh. One day!

And no, there's nothing wrong with your eyes or your computer monitor.  The fault of the fuzziness lies entirely in my mad photography skillz!  Or lack thereof.  But you at least get the idea about the illustrations.