The Magical Picture Book Mind of Mark Karlins
I met Mark Karlins through his picture books long before I met him in person.
They are gentle, tender stories that endow their child characters with eccentric families and friends, unusual yearnings, whimsical impulses, and the zaniest of adventures. Rereading these now, I can see in them the antecedents to his last picture book, Kiyoshi’s Walk.
Kiyoshi’s Walk is also a gentle book, and it appears to me to contain elements of these earlier books in it. In the grandfather who takes the boy on a journey, each thing they see spiralling into its own haiku. There’s no dancing laundry or literally uplifting music in Kiyoshi’s world, but there are those words, musical and elusive, that keep dancing out of his reach until they settle at last into his mind and onto his page.
In a blog interview about Starring Lorenzo and Einstein Too, Mark said:
When I write, I never plan where my stories will go. I usually begin with an image, a phrase, a certain sentence rhythm that will carry me forward. For Starring Lorenzo, it was a youngster who was an outsider that captured my attention. The notion of outsiders, particularly of creative people (both young and old) who don’t quite fit in, is fascinating. They—the artists—are the ones who, hopefully, explore themselves and keep the society moving forward. It is also the outsider, Lorenzo, who feels pain and conflict from his situation. No matter what he does, no matter how he approaches a situation or problem, it doesn’t seem right. And then in steps Einstein, everyone’s favorite long-haired genius, who encourages Lorenzo to find his own way…the two fly off into outer space in a rocketship Lorenzo has made on his Brooklyn roof. Lorenzo follows his own path, but he also needs someone to encourage him. It is those two things that I find important, both the following of one’s path and the encouragement from someone else or from a small community. Not even our little genius, Lorenzo, could have done it all on his own.
Mark passed away on New Year’s Day, 2022, peacefully and surrounded by his family. He was a valued faculty colleague at VCFA and later a member of the writing group that has been my book home for decades now. We will miss him terribly—his kindness, his sharp eye for telling detail, his generous heart. He always found the right questions to ask about a story that hadn't yet found its way.
I wish he hadn’t left this realm just yet, but in some metaphorical sense, I’m sure he’s making poetic meaning somewhere else. Some other kind of where. There, salmon are returning to water by the light of the moon. Flowers, and maybe an orange or two, are raining down. There are ladders to climb to dizzying heights and generosity and encouragement in spades.
