{"id":37854,"date":"2003-03-25T10:45:43","date_gmt":"2003-03-25T15:45:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/home.bates.edu\/?p=37854"},"modified":"2015-03-27T11:54:40","modified_gmt":"2015-03-27T15:54:40","slug":"matt-tavares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2003\/03\/25\/matt-tavares\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumnus Matt Tavares, children's book author-illustrator, gives talk"},"content":{"rendered":"

The art department presents a slide talk by Matt Tavares, a member of the class of 1997 and the author-illustrator of the children’s book Zachary’s Ball<\/em>, at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 27, in Room 104, Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell Street. The talk is open to the public at no cost.<\/p>\n

Tavares adapted his senior thesis at Bates into Zachary’s Ball<\/em>, whose black and white drawings and simple text portray a young boy’s fantasy life at Fenway Park. The book was published in 2000 by the Candlewick Press, which has since published a new edition of the 1823 poem ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas<\/em> with illustrations by Tavares. He has a third, all-original book on the way.<\/p>\n

“In this age of Astroturf and retractable dome stadiums, I wanted to create a story that portrayed baseball in a simple, timeless way — a child going to an old-time ballpark with his fielder’s mitt, hoping to catch a foul ball, or maybe even see his hero hit a home run,” Tavares says of his first book.<\/p>\n

The Boston Globe used the book in a campaign to encourage children to read more.<\/p>\n

In the book, according to Kirkus Reviews, “the mystique of our national pastime is artfully captured through the eyes of a child in this sports story with a feel-good ending.”<\/p>\n

“I’ve never been anyplace more magical than Fenway Park,” says Tavares, who spent much of his childhood hoping to become a baseball player. He lives with his wife in Ogunquit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The art department presents a slide talk by Matt Tavares, a member of the class of 1997 and the author-illustrator of the children’s book Zachary’s Ball<\/em>, at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 27, in Room 104, Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell Street. The talk is open to the public at no cost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creativity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37854"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92944,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37854\/revisions\/92944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}