I’ve written about author Tasha Tudor here at Semicolon before. I even invited her and Madeleine L’Engle to tea, before the deaths of both authors made that impossible. Her books, and particularly her illustrations, are old friends here in our home. So, I was trying to explain to myself what it is exactly that is so endearing and captivating about Tasha Tudor’s stories and illustrations.

First, there’s the obvious fact that, whether or not it’s possible or even truly desirable, all of us long sometimes for an agrarian past, a more wholesome, less complicated, time period and culture when families enjoyed simple pleasures like baking bread or playing dolls or rolling hoops in the garden. And Tasha Tudor’s books evoke such a lost time and place.

Second, if you read about Tasha Tudor’s life, you see that she tried to live the life that her books idealized. Yes, she was divorced (twice), a single parent, and she was born and grew up in Boston, about as far from a simple New England farmhouse as you can get. But it didn’t matter because she chose as an adult to live on a farm and garden and raise animals and wear nineteenth century farm family clothing and cook in the fireplace. She actually lived out, however imperfectly, the life that many people dream of and never even try to achieve.

Third, her books and illustrations are deceptively simple. You look at them, like you look at a Norman Rockwell painting, and you think, “That’s a cute picture of some kids swimming in the creek or a family of dolls or a garden in the summer.” But the illustrations draw you back again and again to look at the details, to note the vine curled around the edge, or the little dog in the corner, or the ruffle on the girl’s dress, and you realize that’s there’s more and still more to explore and study and enjoy. Tasha Tudor’s illustrations for classics such as The Wind in the Willows or The Secret Garden are especially intriguing as they look so right and appropriate for the classic time period of the book in question and yet give new insight into old familiar stories.

Three reason to love the work of Tasha Tudor, author, illustrator, and gardener. I’m sure there are many more. If you’ve written about Ms. Tudor in a past post or today on her birthday, please share a link with us as we celebrate her life and work here on her birthday. Just leave your name or the name of your blog and a link to the post celebrating Tasha Tudor in the Mr. Linky below.

She would have been 93 years old today.

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