OMAHA, NE.- All the World’s a Stage at Joslyn Art Museum comprises more than 70 colorful, richly patterned artworks — pen and ink, watercolor, and gouache (a technique of painting with opaque watercolors prepared with gum) pictures — from 31 children’s books by author-illustrator Anita Lobel. The exhibition shares its title with a featured book – a poem paying tribute to Shakespeare, and nine of his well-known plays, beautifully illustrated with precise details of the times and the world of Elizabethan theatre. The exhibition opened April 14 and is on view through July 1.

“I usually plan a book as a play. The pictures become ‘scenes’ with ‘principals’ and ‘chorus’ grouped and regrouped according to what is then happening in the story," says Lobel. "Writing and illustrating books for children is a form of drama for me. I approach the construction of a picture book as if it were a theatre piece to be performed, assigning dialogue, dressing the characters, and putting them into an appropriate setting.”

Anita Lobel’s name is synonymous with the best in children’s literature. Since the 1960s, she has created such classics as Alison’s Zinnia and Away from Home and received a Caldecott Honor Medal for On Market Street. She is known for three books about her beloved cat — One Lighthouse, One Moon (a New York Times Best Illustrated Book); Nini Here and There; and Nini Lost and Found. Born in Poland in 1934 and a survivor of Auschwitz, Lobel’s childhood memoir, No Pretty Pictures: A Child of War, was a finalist for the National Book Award. She lives in New York City.

Books illustrated by Anita Lobel, as well as her memoir, are available for purchase in Joslyn’s Hitchcock Museum Shop (open during all regular Museum hours).