Ed Emberley, an 85-year-old Ipswich-based illustrator, has made more than 100 eye-popping books for children over the past half century.

Maybe you’ve read "Drummer Hoff," which won the genre’s highest honor — the Caldecott Award — in 1968. Or one of the dozens of titles that followed, including "Ed Emberley’s ABC," "The Big Dipper," "One Wide River to Cross," "Ed Emberley's Big Green Drawing Book," his "Big Orange Drawing Book," "Big Purple Drawing Book" and the "Drawing Book of Faces."

The list goes on.

Now Emberley’s vast body of work that's captivated generations is being celebrated in a new retrospective at the Worcester Art Museum. I met with Emberley and the local street artist who helped make the show happen, Caleb Neelon.

About two dozen Emberley books cover a coffee table in Neelon’s Cambridge home. His 4-year-old daughter, Aziza, grabs hold of a palm-sized flip book from an Emberley set titled, “Six Science Adventures.” Then she uses her nimble digits to animate vibrant, still images of a chameleon in hot pursuit of an insect.

Street artist Caleb Neelon reads some of Ed Emberley's work to his daughter, Aziza. Neelon is curating the Worcester Art Museum's retrospective on Emberley. (Andrea Shea/WBUR)

She excitedly proclaims “zap!” then sweetly implores, “Watch daddy, it's going to get the bug, I think.” Neelon chuckles at Aziza's fascination. Fact is, he can relate.

Making A Retrospective Of Emberley's Art

Neelon is guest curating the Worcester Art Museum's exhibition about Emberley. Neelon says the iconic children's book artist inspired him to create when he was a kid.

You might think some of Emberley's books were made by different artists. The prolific illustrator employed so many varied styles, Neelon explains, pointing to pages featuring everything from hand-carved woodcut prints to intricately executed ink on paper.

Neelon holds Emberley's "Big Purple Drawing Book" next to a drawing he made from it when he was a kid. (Andrea Shea/WBUR)

“There are definitely a lot of artists for children that you know, lather, rinse, repeat for 50 years if it works,” Neelon says. “And more power to 'em. But I find Ed so much more interesting because he was so restless. You know, he'd do a woodcut book one time, and then he'd do something else. He didn't stay put.”

It was Emberley’s "Big Green Drawing Book" that first captivated Neelon when he was 6 or 7 years old. The drawing book series contained an “alphabet” of simple shapes that kids could use to make their own pictures.

“Being able to have that little alphabet of different shapes that you could combine to create so much different stuff really just changed everything,” Neelon remembers. Then he lists off the tools that empowered him to draw. “Triangle, letter 'D,' letter 'U,' squiggle, dot, line, circle. That, drawing-wise, is an alphabet that’s unlimited.”

Some of Ed Emberley's drawing instructions, on display at the Worcester Art Museum. (Courtesy Todd Mazer Photography)

Emberley’s playful series of drawing books are filled with step-by-step guides for building cute objects and creatures with those shapes. Their pages explode with birds, gorillas, werewolves, dragons and sheep. Kids are encouraged not to copy, but to make them unique.

Neelon fashioned his own little blue fuzzy guy after seeing one like it in Emberley’s "Big Purple Drawing Book." Today, you can see that big-eyed character in Neelon's murals around the world and locally in Boston, Cambridge and Worcester.

Neelon says this blue character was inspired by similar drawings in Emberley's "Big Purple Drawing Book." (Andrea Shea/WBUR)

Diving Into An Art Hero's Studio

The 40-year-old street artist and writer is thrilled to be working on an exhibition about Emberley.

“Having the license to go through one of your art heroes' studios — and being able to pull things out and dig around and find neat stuff that was hidden — I mean, that’s a thrill,” Neelon says.

The energetic artist has been climbing the stairs to the same second-floor home studio in Ipswich for decades. On a tour, Emberley tells me about the techniques he used to conjure an army of adorable, sometimes creepy characters. He recalls how he, his wife, Barbara, and their two kids used to sit around the big table up here designing books together. The studio brims with their creations.

Emberley and Neelon unroll a print of Emberley's Paul Bunyan character. (Andrea Shea/WBUR)

Emberley has been happy to let Neelon rifle through and organize his stuff over the past few years, first for a book highlighting Emberley's work and then also for the family's archive. Emberley jokes that the curator knows more about his work than he does.

“I think of myself as being a lazy, vague, scattered-brained hoo-ha who has by luck made a living drawing pictures of funny things,” he says.

Drawing What He Wants, When He Wants

Emberley was born in Malden in 1931 and grew up in Cambridge’s Central Square. After time in the Army and attending the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, he got a job at an advertising firm as a paste-up artist.