How Gyo Fujikawa Drew Freedom in Children’s Books newyorker.com

One of the first images in “A Child’s Book of Poems,” a 1969 collection illustrated by the American artist Gyo Fujikawa, shows a boy on a hill, heading to a village under an enormous sun.
Text and illustration from “Oh, What a Busy Day!” Text / Illustration by Gyo Fujikawa / Courtesy Sterling Publishing Co.
Text and illustration from “Gyo Fujikawa’s A to Z Picture Book.” Text / Illustration by Gyo Fujikawa / Courtesy Sterling Publishing Co.Fujikawa died in 1998, at age ninety, and obituaries in the Times and the L.A. Times illuminated her life story well.
In 2017, the playwright Lloyd Suh staged a one-act called “Disney and Fujikawa,” imagining a dialogue between Walt and Gyo; this fall, HarperCollins will publish “It Began with a Page: How Gyo Fujikawa Drew the Way,” by Kyo Maclear and Julie Morstad, which tells her story beautifully, in picture-book form.
It was just what I wanted to do.” Their freedom was her freedom, too.