In the Studio with Matthew Van Fleet
In Matthew Van Fleet’s novelty books, baby birds’ beaks open to receive worms, a dog scratches at a flea, and stinkbugs do indeed stink. One of his books, Monday the Bullfrog, is in itself a cloth puppet. Another common thread, besides their use of movement and texture—they sell. Van Fleet has published eight books, including his most recent, Alphabet (S&S/Wiseman, Apr.), since 1992. Fuzzy Yellow Ducklings (Dial, 1995) has sold more than a million copies, and last year’s Dog (also S&S/Wiseman) has sold just under 300,000 copies to date.This month Van Fleet’s Alphabet arrives with a 350,000-copy first printing; he illustrated it in the vein of Tails (published by Harcourt in 2003 while his longtime editor, Paula Wiseman, was working there), which also shares the same squat dimensions (10 3/4" x 7 1/4"). Alphabet employs many of the novelty mechanisms familiar to Van Fleet’s books, as well as something completely new for him: a removable poster featuring 26 pop-ups hidden beneath flaps, one for each letter.
Since 1995, Van Fleet has lived with his wife, Mara (who works as an associate art director at Reader’s Digest), and their two children, Alex, 13, and Ryan, 7, in Chappaqua, N.Y., where Bookshelf visited him one recent rainy morning.
