I write and illustrate picture books because I've never outgrown a deep childhood urge to enter a magical world. As a child growing up in Los Angeles I used to wish that my huge, congested city were more like the places in the books that I loved - places where forests grew and seasons changed, where animals talked and anything was possible. I envied those characters who slid down rabbit holes, or visited with Charlotte and Wilbur, or flew with Peter Pan, or floated with Mary Poppins, or journeyed to Oz.

Elisa at age nine

Since I couldn't actually visit these wonderful worlds (except, of course, by reading), I made little imaginary worlds of my own, using the materials at hand. My favorite project was an enormous dollhouse in my closet. The house was filled both with "store-bought" toys and with dolls and creatures which I made myself from paper, cloth, clay, nutshells, sea shells, bread dough, even dried apples. I'd lose myself for hours making up stories about these characters. I loved to make them treasures from scraps of this and that : a paper doily would become a lace tablecloth; half a walnut shell would be a baby's cozy cradle; a postage stamp would make a lovely portrait on the wall. Around the dollhouse I painted a mural, a fanciful landscape of forests, fields, mountains, blue skies - the world that I wished I could live in.

Like all authors and illustrators, I love to make up characters and build stories and environments around them. To make my pictures I combine many media: watercolor, gouache, ink, colored pencils, pastels, markers, crayons -- anything that works! I also use lots of collage. As I did in childhood, I snip and glue old scraps into new shapes: a piece of wool becomes a lion's mane or a child's hair. A doily, snipped to bits, becomes a snowstorm.

Like my collages, my stories are also about the power of imagination to transform old into new, familiar into fantastical. In the book THE LION AND THE LITTLE RED BIRD, a lion turns his tail into a paintbrush, and the walls of his cave into a sunlit, painted world. In THE PAPER PRINCESS, a drawing on paper becomes full of possibilities: by turns, it is a paper doll, a crumbled wad of litter, a birthday card, and a beloved doll again. The child in HOORAY, A PINATA! imagines that a dog pinata is a favorite pet. Ernst the crocodile in THE PUDDLE PAIL sees ordinary rain puddles as sparkling, collectible treasures. In the story ERNST, Ernst imagines an entire universe, where all his "what-ifs" come true. The girl in A MONSTER IN THE HOUSE imagines her baby brother to be a giant, messy, screaming, toe-sucking, hair-pulling monster. In the book,
SUN BREAD, a baker brightens a bleak winter by shaping bread dough into a warm, glowing, life-giving sun. In THE WISHING BALL a homeless and hungry cat and a wistful young crocodile transform their loneliness into friendship, by making each others' wishes come true. And in my newest book, THE APPLE DOLL, a little girl, afraid of starting school, transforms an apple from her tree into a friend.

Although I love creating imaginary worlds, I also enjoy drawing real places. Three of the books I've illustrated take place in big U.S. cities. ABUELA, by Arthur Dorros, is set in New York. CITY BY THE BAY, by Tricia Brown, is "a magical journey around San Fransisco." And CITY OF ANGELS, by Julie Jaskol and Brian Lewis, explores my home city of L.A. The life, energy, textures and wealth of detail in cities inspire my collages.

I'm very inspired as well by my children, Mia and Ben (ages fourteen and ten), my husband Paul, and our various dogs and cats. They all appear in many forms and disguises in my books! My family and I live in the town of Albany, California, next door to Berkeley and across the bay from San Fransisco. From our window, we can see the Golden Gate Bridge, and the boats on San Fransisco Bay.

(To learn more about Elisa and her books see her article "Points of View: Creating Miniature Worlds in Picture Books" on the American Library Association website, or click here.)

A Celebration of
Books and the Bay Area

In 2006, Elisa was asked by Elizabeth Overmyer, Senior Children's Librarian at the Berkeley Public Library, if she would be interested in creating an original piece of art which would later be translated into a large tapestry to hang in the Children's Story Room. Elisa happily accepted the offer, and created a piece in watercolor and collage which features the people and geography of Berkeley and the Bay Area, as well as several children's books, drawn to look like open, flying kites.

When finished, the original art was digitalized at the Magnolia Editions Studio in Oakland, then sent to Belgium, where weavers transformed it into the tapestry. The tapestry and original painting now hang in the Fourth Floor Children's Room of the Main Library in Bekeley. Funding for the project was generously provided by Giorgia Neidorf, through a trust fund in memory of her son, Max Delaware Neidorf-Weidenfeld.