About The Petra Project 

The Petra Project began with Professor Kay E. Vandergrift's Mellon Foundation Grant to study original art for children's picture books at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University. During the process of examining the range of resources in the museum's Rutgers Collection of Original Illustrations for Children's Literature, Vandergrift became intrigued with the almost complete documentation of the creation of both text and illustration for a particular picture story book for children. Petra Mathers' Kisses from Rosa is a story based on an actual experience in the author/illustrator's childhood. Perhaps due, in part at least, to the closeness of this story to her childhood experiences and emotions, Mathers worked on this story for many years attempting to satisfy both herself and her editor that it was just right.

Fortunately for scholars and others interested in the creation of children's books, Mathers preserved the various versions of her work over a ten-year period from first draft and sketches to published book. All of these versions and variants she contributed to the Zimmerli Art Museum, along with correspondence with her editor throughout the creative process. Thus, this exists as a unique collection providing insight into all aspects of the creation of this picture book. Vandergrift was able to bring graduate students in children's literature classes to the Museum to see some of these materials; however, the fragility of these unique items made it impossible to access and closely examine much of this collection.

Several circumstances converged to make the Petra Project a reality as a portion of the larger ECLIPSE website. First, Vandergrift, as ECLIPSE Project Director, recognized that the materials available for Petra Mathers' Kisses from Rosa presented in microcosm a parallel study to that of the larger examination of versions and variants of Mother Goose rhymes. Second, the Kisses from Rosa collection appeared to be an ideal centerpiece for an online course entitled The Art of the Picture Book being developed for the Youth Literature Online Certificate Program in Professional Development Studies at SCILS. Third, and most critical, then graduate student Enola Romano approached Vandergrift wanting to do an independent study related to children's literature. Romano had museum experience, knowledge, expertise, and interest in taking digital photographs of the items in the Kisses from Rosa collection at the Zimmerli Museum and to develop databases and web resources to support this research.

Finally, Karen Novick, Director of Professional Development Studies at SCILS, worked with Ray Caprio, Vice President for Continuous Education at Rutgers University, to obtain a grant to purchase the necessary equipment to be placed in the museum to allow for the photography and digitalization of all documents in the collection. The cooperation of Gail Aaron, Curator of the Rutgers Collection of Original Illustrations for Children's Literature at the Zimmerli Museum and other museum staff was essential to this project. Alex Daley and Lin Lin provided technical assistance in coding and organizing the data uploads. Jane Anne Hannigan, project facilitator of ECLIPSE, contributed greatly to the development of this site. Special gratitude goes to Petra Mathers who first contributed her work to the museum and then granted permission for the use of these original materials on the WWW.

The Petra Project is a scholarly resource that is significant in its presentation of a complete digital record of our research into the creative process of one author/illustrator during the development of a single book. This site enables scholars and students of children's literature and book illustration to see the nuances of change, both visually and textually, as the manuscript was developed from original idea to published book. It is important to note that the very technology supporting this project makes it highly unlikely that the kind of resources digitalized here will be available as a record of such creative processes in the future. Creative artists today most often revise their work online and do not necessarily retain earlier drafts of a manuscript.