A sought-after children’s book author and illustrator in the 1940s, '50s and '60s, who had her first solo exhibition in 1939 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, Dahlov Ipcar has in more recent years seen her picture books languish. That is, until Islandport Press in Yarmouth, Maine, began republishing them in 2008. The press began with her very first illustrated book, Margaret Wise Brown’s The Little Fisherman (1945), and has since released four additional titles. Now Islandport is about to publish the 92-year-old author/illustrator’s first new book in more than two decades, Farmyard Alphabet, due out in late November in time for her birthday.
Initially Islandport publisher Dean Lunt approached Ipcar, who lives on a dairy farm in Georgetown, Maine, about their co-writing a book and using it as a vehicle to reintroduce art from her out-of-print books. "The next morning, she called me," said Lunt. "She woke up at 3:30 a.m. and wrote the whole thing." Islandport will publish the resulting board book, Farmyard Alphabet, with art from 11 of Ipcar's 30 books. “We pulled art from 40 or 50 years ago. It shows how fresh her art is and ahead of her time,” Lund said.
As a result of Islandport’s decision to reissue Ipcar’s books in hardcover with newer formats, the press has garnered fresh attention to her work. Last fall, writing in Cookie magazine, Dave Eggers praised The Cat at Night as “an unappreciated classic.” And in September Ipcar was given the President’s Award by the New England Independent Booksellers Association. She and Robert McCloskey are the only two children’s book authors and illustrators to be singled out for this award since it was introduced 19 years ago.
This fall Islandport began extending the reach of Ipcar’s books into North America. It signed an agreement with Nimbus Published in Halifax, to sell her books in Canada. It also contracted with Ipcar to reissue three more books by 2012, starting with One Horse Farm (1958) in the spring.
But Islandport isn’t the only Maine-based press to recognize Ipcar’s talent. In June, Down East Books in Camden published a coffee-table collection of her artwork, The Art of Dahlov Ipcar.
