Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Illustrating American life in the late 1930s



I'm starting a new project, a historical fiction picture book and trying to decide how best to capture the sights and sounds of growing up in this era.

The late 1930s was an interesting period. Newspaper stories range from the invention of the cheeseburger to the Dust Bowl, including headlines like "Golden Gate Bridge Opened!", and "World War 2 Begins!" Most people were just beginning to recover from the depression only to get involved in a major war.

It's a time when houses were highly stylized and city parks were flourishing. People wanted to create a good life to compensate for all the chaos, not so different from today.