Mercaz Academy Welcomes Caldecott Honor Winning Author & Illustrator

Two-time Caldecott Honor winner Laura Vaccaro Seeger captivated students with her stories and art during her recent visit to Mercaz Academy. She shared pages from her award-winning books and offered a glimpse into her creative process, explaining the artistic and technical challenges she faces as an author-illustrator. Many of Ms. Seeger’s books feature cleverly and carefully designed cutouts that hint at elements revealed on subsequent pages, which require much precision and forethought and add layers of meaning to her stories.

Ms. Seeger stressed how much she had in common with Mercaz students, revealing that she had dreamed of creating picture books since she was very young. She recommended keeping a journal to collect ideas and observations, as she has since childhood. She encouraged students to allow themselves to be imperfect in their journals, advising them to keep revising their ideas until they felt right to them.

Laura Vaccaro Seeger’s visit also included engaging hands-on activities tailored to the different age groups at Mercaz. Older children were challenged to draw a friend without looking at the paper or lifting their pen, discovering that while the drawings weren’t necessarily what they envisioned while they were creating them, they were beautiful and unique. Younger students learned how to build drawings of Dog and Bear—beloved characters from a popular series by Ms. Seeger—using simple shapes. Afterwards, Ms. Seeger encouraged the students to hold up their drawings while she photographed them in a lovely gesture of encouragement and pride in her Mercaz Academy fans.