Denise Fleming

Denise Fleming

Denise Fleming was born in Toledo, Ohio on January 31, 1950 to Frank and Inez Campbell Fleming. She and her sister, Rochelle, grew up in a neighborhood where the kids rode bikes, played games, and organized outdoor circuses and plays.   As a child, she loved making crafts and embellishing her schoolwork with drawings.   Denise also loved to spend time in her father's basement workshop, where she would make things out of wood, clay, and papier-mâché while her father built furniture.   Denise and Rochelle had more fun playing games out of doors. Besides playing, they've enjoyed reading and often would act out these stories with friends.   Although she was good at art, she never thought about being an artist until high school.   During high school she took many art classes and won several awards, including a scholarship.   She attended Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she pursued her major from advertising design to illustration.   After graduation she worked in many art-related jobs such as furniture building, teaching arts and crafts, and designing all sorts of projects.   After visiting New York City with her portfolio, Fleming was immediately given several project to work on and begun starting working on her first illustrator book.

Reading several of her illustrator books, such as In the Tall, Tall Grass, in the Small, Small Pond, Where Once There was a Wood, Time to Sleep, and Buster.   I agree whole-heartedly that she drew from her observations way back as a child.   The simplicity of every picture book in terms of colorful visual appeal, narrative structure, and fable-like expression seem to suggest that it is indeed suited to early childhood readership.   The vibrant colors, shapes, movement, and underlying message on every inch of the page create a story.   A story that makes your brain tick and contemplate what exactly you are looking at.   These things are significant to the constant development, specifically to a...