Christopher Manson
# Christopher Manson

Christopher Manson is a children's book author and illustrator noted for his use of traditional hand tools to painstakingly make the pine woodcuts that fill his several highly acclaimed works.

## Background

Born in Buffalo, New York, Manson graduated in 1975 from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Nova Scotia, having specialized in printmaking. He also obtained a Master of Fine Arts from the State University of New York at New Paltz (SUNY New Paltz).

He returned to Buffalo, where he took a job at a local arts council in arts management, a position that required fundraising skills. "It wasn't for me," he later recalled. "I figured out that I was tired of helping others make their art."

## Career

After illustrating a friend's cookbook, he published the phenomenally popular children's book, MAZE: Solve the World's Most Challenging Puzzle (1985), issued by the major publishing house Henry Holt and Company. The book promised a $10,000 award to whoever solved the book's many visual puzzles, and even though the contest has long since ended, the book remains in print, and was reissued as a computer game in CD-ROM format.

Manson summed up his approach to his authoring and illustrating children's books like so: "What I'm really after is the perfect book. The kind where you just can't imagine the words without the pictures, or the pictures without the words . . . like [Winnie-the-Pooh author A. A.] Milne. But there aren't that many out there to point to as perfect. I'm constantly working toward it." He added, "Even if I won the 40 million dollar lottery, I'd still do this — I'd have a fancier studio, but I'd still do this."

## Works

Author and illustrator:

* MAZE: Solve the World's Most Challenging Puzzle (1985)
* The Rails I Tote: Forty-Five Illustrated Spoonerisms to Decipher (1987)
* The Practical Alchemist: Showing The Way An Ordinary House-Cat May Be Transformed Into True Gold (1988)
* A Gift For The King: A Persian Tale (1989)
* Two Travelers (1990)
* The Crab Prince: An Entertainment For Children (1991)
* The Marvellous Blue Mouse (1992)

Illustrator:

* The Norman Table: The Traditional Cooking of Normandy (1985)
* A Farmyard Song (1992)
* The Tree in the Wood: An Old Nursery Song (1993)
* Good King Wenceslas (1994)
* Till Year's Good End (1997)
* Over the River and through the Wood (1998)
* Uncle Sam and Old Glory (2000)
* Black Swan/White Crow (2007)
