Oblong Books & Music

Please join us for a reading and signing with Marc Simont, author of The Beautiful Planet: Ours to Lose.

The Beautiful Planet: Ours To Lose is an impassioned anit-war cartoon book by one of America's foremost illustrators. Marc Simont's drawings, taken from five decades of editorial cartooning, capture the essence of a brooding Nixon, a smiling Reagan, a bland Bush One, and a dumbfounded Bush Two as they prosecute their wars. Simont's fierce portrayals of the Military-Industrial Complex are intimately linked to his passionate indignity on behalf of all civilians, soldiers, and prisoners who have suffered. Continually struck by the majesty of the planet as it floats in space like a jewel, Simont asks, will it survive?

Born in Paris in 1915 to Caralonian parents, Marc Simont spent his childhood in France, Spain and the United States, where he settled in 1934. After serving time in the U.S. Army during World War II, Simont went on to illustrate over a hundred books working with such diverse authors as Margaret Wise Brown, Red Smith, and James Thurber.  Simont received the Caldecott Medal in 1957 for his illustrations to A Tree is Nice by Janice May Udry and a Caldecott Honor in 1950 for The Happy Day by Ruth Krauss.

He is the author/illustrator of seven books, most recently The Stray Dog (2001), which won a Caldecott Honor, was chosen by New York Times as one of the ten best illustrated books of the year, became an ALA Notable Children's Book and received the Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book Award.

Internationally acclaimed for its grace, humor and beauty, Marc Simont's art is in collections as far afield as the Kijo Picture Book Museum in Japan.  He was chosen as the 1997 Illustrator of the Year in his native Catalonia and received the Hunter College James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism in 2008. 

The Beautiful Planet: Ours to Lose (Paperback)

By Marc Simont

$15.00

ISBN-13: 9781935212096
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Easton Studio Press, 02/01/2010

---