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Ashley Bryan: Enigmatic Educator
| Article
# : |
15871 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1989 |
2,104 Words |
| Author
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Jon Laitin
Jon Laitin is a free-lance writer, photographer, and editor
living in Thorndike, Maine. |
First-time visitors to the island home of Ashley Bryan step across the threshold of the fourth dimension into a world of children's dreams. Little bears on bicycles holding balance bars perform on high wires. A menagerie of handmade dolls, stuffed animals, and puppets are poised to spring into action at the stroke of midnight. Wooden horseback riders patiently wait for nimble fingers to set them in motion.
"Have I wandered into a museum gift shop?" the caller wonders, while trying to regain his equilibrium.
"You can decorate your house, if you like, with pictures, with bicycle tires, with hubcaps, whatever," explains Bryan. "I happen to like these things, and they make up my environment."
Who is Ashley Bryan? The childlike furnishings in his home on the Maine island of Islesford, better known to local residents as Little Cranberry, are as enigmatic as the man himself. While he is best known as an author and illustrator of children's books, the interests and talents of this Renaissance man go well beyond a narrow field of specialization.
Bryan is a painter, craftsman, teacher, storyteller, musicologist, linguist, philosopher, and more. He has been an art professor at Queens College in New York City and at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Bryan travels throughout the United States lecturing on the art of giving life to the written word by reading aloud. His own published stories are sensitive and well-researched interpretations of African
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