Trina S. Hyman

I first met Trina Hyman at ALA in 1976. She was signing autographs; I was working on a manuscript which compared Trina's Snow White to Nancy Ekholm Burkert's and I had some questions I hoped she might answer. Trina's modest, friendly manner immediately put me at ease, and strengthened my respect for her. What I now know, after letters, phone calls, and face-to-face visits, is that Trina is more than just a "picture book illustrator." She is a keen artist with a strong understanding of art, of psychology, and of people—including children.

Trina is aware of her medium, and of its limitations; though she is not always pleased with the final printings of her illustration she has said,

My own other-side-of-the-tracks experience as a 'commercial' artist has taught me, long ago, to be thankful if the thing is reproduced with 30% faithfulness to the original, to expect the printed art to look different; have a different 'feel' and to be pleased if a book gets reviewed at all . . . because it matters to the sales of the book, and I have usually needed the money.

This other-side-of-the-tracks understanding helped Trina as the first Art Director for the children's magazine Cricket. It was largely through her efforts, that early Cricket viewers had the pleasure of lush covers, full of verve and imagery, representative of the best available contemporary art styles and interpretations. Her work with Cricket also allowed Trina to express her sense of humor and her ability to wink at reality. Some artists might have found the creation of cartoon type illustrations featuring the Cricket menagerie tedious, but Trina has not. Any reader who wonders about Trina's wit, her ability to communicate with children, or her ability to use word play need only read a year of margins to find the answer.

Trina S. Hyman is a prolific artist, but not a careless one. A great deal of story analysis takes place before she sits down to do the illustrations; and if the story seems to need decoration rather than interpretation of mood and characterization, she will usually turn down the manuscript. Even when, in Peter Pan and Dickens's Christmas tale of Scrooge, Marley and Tiny Tim, her work is largely decorative, the illustrations depict personalities.

Some of Hyman's illustrated books seem stylistically most complete in terms of story.

One that does so is How Does It Feel to Be Old? which was written by Norma Farber as a poignant answer to a child's question. Trina's illustrations reflect the complexity of the text by showing the reader that to be old is to be thoughtful, to be caught in the world of memories, to be alone and longing for companionship. The illustrations are more than decorative; they are sensitive mirrors of an older woman's inner thoughts. This mirroring becomes acute once the old woman and her granddaughter gaze into the mirror's reflection together. At that point, Trina overlaps her balanced black line drawings with a clutter of memories, all in earth brown. In those brown sketches a young woman comes alive, and the grandmother's past story becomes as real as her present lifestyle. Yet these dreams fade away when the woman proclaims she is "only barely recalling the youngster who long, long ago was me," and the reader is returned to the present day scene, where an active, cheerful grandmother helps her now teenage granddaughter pack up and says goodbye, sending her off to her present day active world with the quiet plea, "Remember the stories I told you, my dear . . . Soon you'll be knowing that Grandma has died while you are still growing in inches and pride." The final illustration contains an additional comment for the viewer to ponder. In it, the present day granddaughter is depicted in brown while the grandmother walks off the page in the black tones used earlier in scenes of reality to meet a browntoned memory of a man in another world, another time. Present day realities become memories, and past hopes become future realities...