Farmyard Alphabet

In a career spanning more than eighty years, Maine artist Dahlov Ipcar (1917-2017) wrote and illustrated more than thirty children's and young adult books, starting with The Little Fisherman (by Margaret Wise Brown) in 1945 and including The Cat at Night and My Wonderful Christmas Tree. Dahlov Ipcar was born in Vermont and raised in Greenwich Village. She summered in Maine after her parents (the famed sculptor William Zorach and artist Marguerite Zorach) bought a farm on Georgetown Island in 1923. Thirteen years later, eighteen-year-old Dahlov, an aspiring artist, married Adolph Ipcar. The young couple left New York City in 1937 to live on the Maine farm where they first met. By the early 1940s, Ipcar had nearly given up thoughts of writing and illustrating books, when she was contacted by a New York publisher to illustrate The Little Fisherman. The struggling young artist jumped at the chance, and this charming title helped launch a prolific career that saw her write and illustrate more than thirty children's books of her own.

In 2001, she received The Katahdin Award, a lifetime achievement award from the Maine Library Association, and in 2010, she was awarded the New England Independent Booksellers Association's prestigious President's Award for her outstanding contribution to arts and letters.

"Ipcar pairs charming depictions of farm life with a gentle rhyming text to take you from A to Z. Illustrations selected from her forty year career give the book a classic vintage feel."
– Phoebe Vreeland, The Children's Book Review

"At 93, children's book illustrator Dahlov Ipcar gives young readers her vision of the ABCs"
– Aislinn Sarnicki, Bangor Daily News  

"This is the first of her books to become a board book, and it has similar qualities in the unique vintage colors that she uses.  The illustrations are done in a European folk art style, simple but not cutesy.  Ipcar is unusual as a children's illustrator in that she uses the color black occasionally to great effect.  Most kid's books seem to avoid black, and I'm not sure why.  But the colors of the varying animals pop against the squares of black that alternate with other colors in this board book.  The theme, obviously, is the animals in the farmyard.  Geared towards babies, and non-toxic of course, my son still enjoys reading it despite his "I not baby" status."—Black Sheep Dances