Comrades: Great books raise great children. Know your history.
Born in Germany and raised in New York City, Vesper writes and illustrates novels which tell, through both words and pictures, stories of history’s rhymes. Her debut illustrated YA novel, What the Night Sings, about the aftermath of the Holocaust through the eyes of a young musician, won numerous awards including a National Book Award Nominee. She also illustrates picture books for the younger set. Vesper has a BFA in Illustration from Parsons and an MFA in Illustration as Visual Essay from School of Visual Arts and is the host of the podcast Vesperisms: The Art of Thinking for Yourself, which aims to cultivate a rehumanized worldview through artistic thinking. She lives with her husband, filmmaker Ben Stamper, in the Northeast, and teaches illustration at School of Visual Arts.
In our conversation, we discuss:
Her childhood leading her into drawing and her artistic education
How she noticed the subversion in art and literature in the 2010s compared to the 1990s
What she has seen at art school as a student and instructor
How Marxists groom youth through attractive propaganda and why politics is the death of art - the sales track versus the awards track for books
Important themes for children and her favorite books that feature wayfinding
Whether we are entering a new golden age for art
Best practices for integrating technology into artistic work
“But as artists, we need to demand the right to think, speak, act and create for ourselves, and to make the work that comes from our own processing of how we see the world and our own times. Complete honesty, with ourselves first. Detoxifying ourselves of political suasion. Humanizing the work instead of being slowly inched toward misanthropy.”
“I hope that the next four years will be characterized by everyone chilling the F out. I hope the rage fatigue sets in and we learn how to throw good parties again. I hope we learn to see our neighbors through our actual, physical, human eyes instead of TikTok turkey filters or whatever square we’re supposed to post next. I hope we learn how to fall in love again, which is, incidentally, what my next novel is about. I hope we make stupid rom-coms and nerdy space-exploration flicks and get excited about the velcro sounds on our Trapper Keepers. I hope we learn how to fold notes into neat triangles and pass them to the boys we like with heart-bedazzled checklists of “will you go out with me yes/no”. Because I’m ready to remember what it meant to get legit chills or feel the hair stand up on my arms or feel my heart drop with romance.”
Her books would make great gifts for the children in your life:
What the Night Sings: https://amzn.to/41p4bff
Berliners: https://amzn.to/4gaenN6
A Cloud of Outrageous Blue: https://amzn.to/4gt3Vjt
The Greatest: https://amzn.to/3ZmZkZi
A Most Clever Girl: https://amzn.to/3VAre2L
Amazing Abe: https://amzn.to/3VzHl0x
