Art & Max

David Wiesner has created many wonderfully surreal picture books. Our favorite is Tuesday. Or The Three Pigs. Or, well, whichever one we are currently reading.

But these days our true favorite has to be David Wiesner’s Art & Max. Out of all the books that we’ve read to David dozens of times, these were the first characters that David ever decided to role play with us. I cannot count how many times David has come up to me out of the blue, said “You’re Arthur, I’m Max,” and then started to riff off the dialogue in the book. If he ever asks you

he’s hoping that you will give the correct response: “Well... you could paint me.”

And he will then mime painting you.

And he will then keep asking, hoping that you will keep coming up with new and wonderful things to pretend to paint.

It feels perfectly appropriate that David would choose two of David Wiesner’s characters to bring off the page in some fashion.

On Monday while David was in preschool, L got us both in to hear David Wiesner talk about how he developed his latest project, an iPad app called Spot. The talk was fascinating, providing insight into an incredible and creative mind with a lot of behind-the-scenes details about how it all came together. Afterwards, we were able to tell David Wiesner how much we love his work, and the important role that Art & Max has played in the development of our son’s imagination.

This is David Wiesner after the talk inscribing David’s beloved copy of Art & Max, “From one David to another.”

Oh, and we now have the poster for Art & Max that was taped up on the wall for his talk. Because we asked how we could get one, and sometimes people are really kind.