Dan Andreasen Bill Ballantine Felicia Bond Lucienne Bloch Clare Bice Boston Mary Cameron Nancy Edwards Calder Jean Chandler Jean Charlot, Jean Charlot Papers Charlot, Jean, 1898-1979 Remy Charlip Jesse Clay B Cooney Bio Barbara Cooney Floyd Cooper Harpers’ Page John O’Hara Cosgrave Eleanor Dart Robert de Veyrac David Diaz Harper’s Webpage Gil Dicicco Leo Dillon & Diane Dillon Walt Disney Studio Gertrude Elliott Richard Egielski Victor Dowling Lou Fancher Aaron FineAnne Fleur Richard Floethe Richard Floethe Bio Tibor GergelyDiane Goode Geoffrey Hayes Philippe Harchy Rosella Hartman André Hellé Marx Hubbard Benrei Huang Clement Hurd Dahlov Ipcar D Ipcar Bio Susan Jeffers Steve Johnson Crockett Johnson G. Brian Karas Daniel Kirk Camilia Koffler (Ylla) Loretta Krupinski, Jim LaMarche Tom Leonard Lisa McCue J. P. Miller Beni Montresor Larry Moore Anne Mortimer Evalin Ness Evaline Ness BIO Lillian Obligado Joan Paley Alice & Martin Provensen Chris Raschka Roberta Rauch Robert Rayevsky Victoria Raymond H. A. Rey ROJAN FEODOR ROJANKOVSKY Christopher Santoro Steven Salerno Richard Scarry BIO Carol Schwartz Art Seiden Charles G. Shaw Symeon Shimin Marc Simont Esphyr Slobodkina E Slobodkina Papers Harpers Esphyr S Pages Rosalie Slocum John Speirs Mary Wilson Stewart Cindy Szekeres Hellen Stone Ann Strugnell John Tenniel Hendrik Willem Van Loon Dorothy Wagstaff Teri L. Weidner Leonard Weisgard Collecting Little Golden Books pg Kurt Wiese Eloise Wilkin Dagmar Wilson Garth Williams Garth Williams Harpers Bio Author page Good Reads bio page Ashley Wolff Dan Yaccarino

Bio:Dan Andreasen

Dan Andreasen began professionally as a sculptor for American Greetings Corp. where he designed figurines, Christmas ornaments and gift products. In the last 25 years he has illustrated more than 25 picture books. He is the illustrator of two of the American Girl historical characters, Felicity and Samantha. Dan also is the illustrator of the New Little House series of books, The Rose Years, The Caroline Years and The Charlotte Years. His publishing clients include Harper Collins, Simon and Schuster, Penguin, Scholastic, American Girl, Harcourt and Henry Holt. His illustrations have also been used to advertise a wide variety of products including Folgers, Harley Davidson, Fanny Farmer, Orville Redenbacher, Kraft and Marshall Fields. He lives in Medina, Ohio with his wife and three children.

Links: Gallery of artwork

Titles: The Little Fisherman , new edition

Bio:Bill Ballantine

Born in 1910 in Millvale, Pennsylvania, Ballantine was introduced to circuses by his father, a member of the Mystic Shrine and once mayor of their home town. Mixing sawdust and grease paint with the sparkling tarnish of the music hall next door to his childhood home, Ballantine developed a lifelong hunger for show business. After graduating from high school, Ballantine found work in sign shop, painting posters for local movie houses, and after several years, began attending the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, beginning his long career as an artist/illustrator and later writer. Through the years, he worked for a succession of employers, including the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, Associated Press, PM, Punch and during WW II, the Office of War Information (a forerunner of the CIA) for which he designed and drew pro-democracy leaflets that the US government air-dropped over the continent. Even while collecting a weekly paycheck at a newspaper, news service, or government agency, Ballantine also accepted freelance illustration and writing assignments that often provided him the opportunity to hitch rides with circus caravans. He traveled with Ringling Bros Circus during the 1946 season and then, finally, in 1947, he decided to bid a temporary farewell to the workaday world of publishing and run away to the circus. He “joined out” as a clown with the biggest of all big tops, Ringling Bros. and Barnum Bailey Circus. It was his great fortune to become a member of the Ringling clown alley with the august of the augustes—Felix Adler, Paul Jerome, Paul Jung, Emmett Kelly, and Harry Dann—as his working colleagues. While working as a clown, he met his wife, Roberta Ballantine, a graduate of Pomona College who left California immediately after receiving her BA to go to NY where she worked as an actress and comedienne before being hired by RBBB as the slender six-foot tall “Snow Queen” who rode about the tent in the payoff float, a horse-drawn carriage with Prince Paul, the midget king. In her silver spangled skin-tight costume with her three-foot high ostrich plume headdress, she looked “nine feet tall” to Bill who walked behind the float dressed as a sailor carrying a buxom mermaid. From the waist up, he was mermaid, his clown face framed by long blond curls and a golden crown topped by a single pink feather. A double strand of three-inch (76 mm) fake pearls hung down over pearl studded breasts. Rings and bracelets slipped over his elbow length white cotton gloves, and in one hand, he carried a gold-filigree hand mirror. From the waist down he was sailor with white cotton duck pants reaching to red striped socks and oversized clown shoes. Strapped to his front was the false fish tail of the mermaid and strapped to his back the false upper half of the sailor. As a final touch, the false arms of the sailor’s torso draped around his own waist, and there he was, a sailor carrying a mermaid. After Bill and Roberta married in 1948, they both left the life of sawdust and spangles, but Bill soon returned, first to design a complete new midway for the show, including sideshow banners and menagerie cage designs, and then as a chronicler of the backlot and the show. Over his long career as a writer/illustrator, he published nearly 100 articles on circus and travel and illustrated regularly True magazine’s backpage feature “Strange but True” with his graceful and warmly humorous pen and ink line drawings. In 1994 sixty four of his large circus drawings were exhibited at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art Circus Gallery in Sarasota, Florida, where Bill and Roberta settled after raising a family of five children in Rockland County, NY. Then later by the City of Gainesville, Florida. [edit]

Links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ballantine

Bio:Bloch, LUCIENNE.

born January S’ 1909, in Geneva, SWitzerland, and her childhood was spent there, then in New York and Cleveland. studied at Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris.

Lucienne Bloch’s father is the composer, Ernest Bloch, her sister Suzanne, is known for her unique concerts of ancient music.

At the age of eleven Lucienne was already illustrating – her own child fancies Such as The Cat’s Weekly . After a SCore of years of study and work _ academic training in sculpture and painting in Paris, Berlin and F glass sculpture designing in Holland, assistant to Diego in Detroit and New York – she returned to her chl ambition as illustrator of children’s books. As a child her j illustrations were those of Boutet de Monvel in the son, Chansons de France pOur les Petits Francais; as an adu own three children have been her prime inspiratio: recent years she and her artist husband, Stephen P. Din have been lecturing on art and painting murals in varioul of the United States. They have executed a mural fe architect, Eric Mendelsohn, at Temple Emanuel, Grand R: Michigan, and a 15,000 square foot mural for Internal Business Machines at San Jose, California. Lucienne 1 has Won the Gorham Award in Sculpture; Gold Meda Lithography at the Paris Decorative EXPOSition; San Franc Art Festival Prize in Water Color, 1950, 1954 and 1955; other prizes in ceramics, children’s portrai ts, and for t illustrations. Her glass sculpture and lithographs are in val museums in the United States and Europe. The Dimitr have moved from Flint, Michigan, and now make their he in Mill Valley, California.

Links:

http://www.luciennebloch.com/biographies/lucienne_bloch.htm

Bio:FELICIA BOND

July 18, 1954-

AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR OF Poinsettia and the Firefighters, etc.

Autobiographical sketch of Felicia Bond:

THE MAKING of a picture book is an internal and an external process; the internal one being that of the imagination, full of rough edges and free associations, the external one being that of the craft, of giving shape and credibility to the ideas.

When I travel to schools and talk to the children about books and my work, I like to tell them where my ideas come from. I also show them many of the materials I use. This is my way of simplifying-and leaving unsaid-the often complicated distinctions between the internal and the external process in the creative mind.

Recently I was asked by a primary school magazine to submit to them a “message” of my choice for their young readers. I wrote the following three paragraphs. They describe as well as twenty a small part of the interior world I would draw on when writing or illustrating a book.

“I was five years old when I decided to become an artist. I liked to draw houses, animals, and the people in my family. But it was a beam of sunlight coming through my bedroom window in the late afternoon that inspired me to draw what I saw and felt as I walked into that room.

“Today, twenty-eight years later, it is still light that inspires me. In my first book,

Poinsettia and Her Family, I drew that beam of sunlight I had seen so many years before, and described it. This is how I started writing. The sunbeam needed words to go with it.

“If you look at that first book about Poinsettia you will see that it is about those same things I said I liked to draw when I was five. This is often the way it is with me. When I make a book I use ideas that come from things I cared about or was interested in when I was a child. Things like food! Or Christmas trees! Or sleeping and dreaming, making valentines, or noises in the dark! I continue to care about these things today, and although they are sometimes just small parts of my books, they are often the reason my story gets told.”

Felicia Bond was born in Yokohama, Japan, to American parents. She received her B.F.A. degree in 1976 from the University of Texas in Austin. She lived in New Y ark City for ten years, then moved to Austin. Before becoming a full-time artist and author, she had been a botanical illustrator, at the Spring Branch Science Center in Houston, Texas; a puppeteer in Austin, Texas,

performing at the public library; and Art Director at Margaret K. McElderry Books in New York City. She has also taught art to grade-school students and painting to adults. Her work has appeared in Cricket magazine and in Family Circle and has been translated into German, French, Danish, Japanese, and Afrikaans.

Poinsettia and Her Family was a Reading Rainbow selection in 1984, and If You Give a Mouse a Cookie was a selection of both the Junior Literary Guild and the Book-of-theMonth Club. Big Red Barn was also a Bookof-the-Month Club selection.

SELECTED WORKS WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED: Poinsettia and Her Family, 1981; Mary Betty Lizzie McNutt’s Birthday, 1983; Four Valentines in a Rainstorm, 1983; The Halloween Performance, 1983; Christmas in the Chicken Coop, 1983; Poinsettia and the Firefighters, 1984; Wake Up, Vladimir, 1987.

SELECTED WORKS ILLUSTRATED: The Sky Is Full of Stars, by Franklyn M. Branley, 1981; How Little Porcupine Played Christmas, by Joseph Slate, 1982; Mama’s Secret, by Maria Polushkin, 1984; If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, by Laura Joffe Numeroff, 1985; Big Red Barn (rev. ed), by Margaret Wise Brown, 1989.

Links:publishers bio

Bio:Bice, CLARE

Clare Bice Boston

Born January 24, 1909, in Durham, Ontario, Canada. His childhood was spent in Canada. He was graduated from the University of Western Ontario, London, and attended the Art Students League and Grand Central School of Art, New York.

Clare Bice is the Curator of the Williams Memorial Art Gallery and Museum of London, Ontario, and a painter who is an Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy and a member of the Ontario Society of Artists, both elected bodies. He paints landscapes, coastal subjects, and portraits, and exhibits regularly in national exhibitions in Canada. His work was represented at the New York World’s Fair in 1939. He has always been interested and active in athletics, – football, basketball, tennis, and track, – both in school and after. He served in the Canadian Army in England and Europe from 1942 to 1946. Since 1941 he has illustrilted a number of books for publishers both in Canada and the United States, and has written as well as illustrated several books for children. In 1953 he was awarded a Canadian Government Fellowship for one year’s work on.

School, London. Mr. Bice is married to Marion Agnes Reid; they have two children, Kevin and Megan, and they live in London, Ontario. eled in England and France. He had his first one man show at the Daniel Gallery in New York in 1928. In World War II he served as a captain in the armed forces from 1942 to 1944. He has painted many murals, including four United States Post Office murals, and he

Links:Titles: Animals Plants & Machines

Bio:CHARLlP, REMY

Born January 10, 1929, in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York, where his childhood was spent. Attended Cooper Union, New York; Black Mountain College, Black Mountain, North Carolina; Merce Cunningham School, New York.

Remy Charlip’s work has grown out of the influence of the avant·garde theatre dance of Merce Cunningham and John Gage. As well as dancing in this and other professional dance companies he has designed sets, costumes, posters and handbills. A graduate of the Fine Arts Department of Cooper Union, he decided upon a theatrical career after appearing in a Dadaist play at the Cooper Union Forum Hall. He was given a scholarship in Dance at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, in return for designing sets and costumes, and teaching arts and crafts and painting to children. Continuing his dance training in New York, Mr. Charlip, at the same time, taught design classes at the Whitman School of Interior Design, choreographed dances for The Living Theater, did book jackets and illustrations for magazines, designed textiles and wallpapers, and wrote articles for dance magazines and dance criticism for newspapers. Recently he arranged an exhibit of paintings by dancers. His first book, Dress Up and Let’s Have a Party, was published while he was on a dance tour of the West Coast with Merce Cunningham. Remy Charlip lives in New York City.

REMY CHARLIP January 10, 1929-

AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR OF Arm in Arm, etc.

Autobiographical sketch of Remy Charlip:

I REMEMBER when I was little wanting to be a clown, a farmer, an artist, and a violinist. My mother wouldn’t buy me a violin because she said I would lose interest in it like everything else.

My first taste of glory in relation to art was in kindergarten when I filled up the blackboards with a drawing in colored chalks of an ocean liner with hundreds of portholes, and it was left up for Open School Week.

Two of my pictures were chosen by a gallery for a show of children’s art. One was a version of a tropical scene I was fond of painting: green palms, purple mountains, orange sunset, blue water. The other was a copy of a charcoal drawing I found in the street of a tenement: stoop, window with sickly plant, garbage cans, lurking cats. It interests me now that the fantasy scene was in full color and I felt free to rearrange it whereas the slum scene I knew so well was in black and white and was a direct copy. I was amazed to overhear my father proudly showing his friend a newspaper clipping about the exhibition, for he never showed his pride or love to me. I see now where the confusion stems about receiving love for what I did, rather than what I was. This love was further confused by the fact that I felt both pictures were not really my own or original.

I got my first lesson in originality when a brilliant teacher in a settlement house plopped a lump of clay in front of me and said not to give it form until I had looked at it long enough for something to suggest itself. I poured my soul into that grey lump. When it was finished I brought it home to my family. I called it “The Dead Horse.” It was laughed about for weeks. Was it after incidences like this, where something deeply felt seemed funny to others, that I got the idea to be a clown?

When it came time to choose a high school, my mother came up to see my guidance teacher who was also my French teacher. I wanted to go to farming school. I had a plot of land in a small park and grew carrots, radishes, corn, lettuce and flowers. The Eiffel Tower on display that I had made out of toothpicks influenced the decision. “I think Remy should be an artist,” my mother said. “It’s more practical.”

I graduated from the Fine Arts department of Cooper Union, but being a painter seemed hopeless to me. I thought I didn’t have any meaningful ideas worth expressing. I didn’t yet know how to use the lesson of the lump of clay, nor did I know how a work of art can grow from the seed of feeling, no matter how slight or delicate and that it could be “worthwhile” even when humorous and uncomplicated.

So I started to study dancing to try to get away from “ideas” by experiencing things more physically. I danced in Merce Cunningham’s company for eleven years and was a founder of the Paper Bag Players, atheater for children. Since we made little money performing I supported myself doing costume, set, poster, textile and book-jacket designs.

One day I had an appointment with May Garelick, editor at Young Scott. She forgot she had a wedding party that weekend and was at the hairdresser’s. I waited and waited, finally asked for a blank dummy, filled it with pictures and text, and when she returned she bought it, my first children’s book, Dress Up and Let’s Have a Party.

I have just finished my nineteenth book, Arm in Arm, and it is my favorite. I have enjoyed collaborating on books with Margaret Wise Brown, Ruth Krauss, Judith Martin, Betty Miles, Sandol Stoddard Warburg and Burton Supree and I think all are good books. But Arm in Arm is special, a kind of culmination of all that I have been doing: painting, writing, dancing, choreographing, teaching, film-making, directing. And yet too, I feel it is only a beginning.

Remy Charlip is head of the Children’s Theatre and Literature Department at Sarah Lawrence College. He is on the advisory panel of the Connecticut Commission on the Arts’ “Project Create,” the Brooklyn Children’s Museum’s “Muse” and the Judson Poets’ Theatre and Dance Theatre. He has been consultant and lecturer at a number of educational institutions, including New York University, Bank Street School of Education, Mills College, The New School, and the School of Visual Arts. He received the Ingram Merrill award in 1961 and 1963 for the “experimentation, creation, and development of children’s plays and children’s literature.” In 1966 he won the “Obie” (OffBroadway) Award for the direction of A Beautiful Day, by Ruth Krauss, and he received a ’68-’69 Yale-Joseph E. Levine Grant. He won a Boys’ Clubs of America Junior Book Award in 1967 for Mother, Mother, I Feel Sick …. A number of his works have appeared in exhibitions of the American Institute of Graphic Arts.

The Remy Charlip Library of the Greenville (Delaware) Elementary School houses a collection of his paintings, drawings, dum-

Remy Charlip: REH [not ray] mee SHAH lip

Links: http://www.harpercollins.com/authors/11918/Remy_Charlip/index.aspx

Titles:

FOUR FUR FEET

DEAD BIRD

DAVID’S LITTLE INDIAN/CARPE DIEM

Bio:CHARLOT, JEAN *

Born in 1898 in Paris where his childhood was spent.

An American citizen born in France, Jean Charlot is nevertheless known to critics as ” that great Mexican artist” because of his murals at the University of Mexico, frescoes at the Ministry of Education in Mexico City, and various writings on Mexican art and archeology. Of Mexican descent on his mother’s side, he did not, however, go to Mexico until he was twenty-two. At sixteen he was fighting for the life of Paris in World War I and later commanded a Colonial Division fighting in France. During World War II he was code officer with one of the French commissions stationed in New York. His career as an artist began in Mexico in 1921. He has been associated as an artist with Dr. Silvanus Morley, director of Carnegie excavations at Chichen Itza in Yucatan; and he has been instructor of art in the Art Students League, Chouinard

Art Institute, and Florence Cane School, New York. In addition to his mural work, canvas painting, and teaching, his time is filled with writing, lecturing, archeological research, book illustration and the perfecting of a new process of lithograph printing. In the United States he has depicted the life of St. Brigid for a church in Peapack, New Jersey; has made two small frescoes for the University of Iowa, a large mural on the outside facade of the Fine Arts Building of Georgia University; and other murals at the Des Moines (Iowa) Art Center, Notre Dame University, St. Mary’s College, Indiana, Christ the Good Shepherd Church, Lincoln Park, Michigan; and the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, and the Bishop Bank, Waikiki. His easel paintings are in the Rockefeller Collection, Phillips Memorial Gallery, and Museum of Modern Art, New York; Uffizi Galleries, Florence; and in the Mayer Mounksko and Claudel Galleries, Paris. His early book illustrations include those done for Melchor G. Ferrer’s Tito’s Hats, 1940, Anita Brenner’s Boy Who Could Do Anything, 1942, and Margaret Wise Brown’s Child’s Goodnight Book, 1943. Books which won the Newbery Medal in two successive years were illustrated by Mr. Charlot: Secret of the Andes by Ann Nolan Clark in 1953, and And Now Miguel by Joseph Krumgold in 1954· Jean Charlot has received a Guggenheim Fellowship to work on a history of Mexican mural painting, and two honorary degrees: D.F.A. from Grinnell College, Iowa, 1946; and LL.D. from St. Mary’s College, Indiana, 1956. He gave the Ryerson Lectures at Yale University, on Mexican Art, in 1948. He is now Professor of Art at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu.

Jean Charlot 1898-ILLUSTRATOR OFA Child’s Good Night; A Child’s Good Morning; Two Little Trains; … And Now Miguel; Etc.Autobiographical sketch of Jean Charlot:

MY training as an artist happened in Mexico, in fields only remotely related to children’s book illustration, archaeology and mural painting. In the twenties, I worked for the Carnegie Institution of Washington’ in the ruins of Chichen Itza, in Yucatan, copying the bas-reliefs of haughty warriors and plumed serpents. In Mexico City, I did frescoes on the walls of public buildings, in the rather heroic manner that is the trademark of what came to be known as the Mexican mural renaissance.I heard many a story from the lips of my Indian friends, stories meant for the young, but somewhat frightening by American standards, if not by the sturdier ones of Mother Goose. Mexican tales were full of peculiar creatures, prompt to devour delinquent little boys and girls; nahuaques, or sorcerers, could at will become wolves, or rare birds of prey.

My first illustrations published in the United States were for such oft-heard tales. The Sun, The Moon, and a Rabbit, in line and flat color, had a cool reception. Consensus was that its barbaric flavor was expected of Mexico but that American publishers would not stand for such crudities. That was in 1930 and since then crudity of a sort has become synonymous with sophistication.

To be tagged and pigeonholed by the book trade was another surprise. Not unagreeably, I became the fellow to contact when the story was about brown people, regardless of what country they came from. This enlarged my knowledge of geography. Dog fights and love feasts with authors and publishers have enlarged my knowledge of psychology. For stern criticism, there have been my four children, truly zealous to point to their father’s shortcomings. As they grow up and enter their teens, something they are doing now with gusto, I may have to curtail my career as a children’s books illustrator, and switch to the field of adult books.

A well-known muralist, born in Paris, Mr. Charlot has, since 1929, taught and lectured on art throughout the United States. He now lives in Honolulu where he is Senior Professor of Art at the University of Hawaii.

Jean Charlot: ZHAN shar LO

Bio:COONEY, BARBARA·

Born August 6, 1917, in Brooklyn, New York. Childhood was spent on Long Island where she attended Great Neck Preparatory School. Also attended BriarcIi£l School; Smith CoIIege; Art Students League, New York.

“My father was a stockbroker, my mother painted pictures for fun; so her children did too, and that’s how it all began,” writes Barbara Cooney. ” We lived in a suburb of New York and went to school there. Summers were spent in Maine. After boarding school and college I trudged around New York City with my portfolio. Then I began to write books for myself so I could draw the sort of pictures I wanted. At the Art Students League I learned etching and lithography.” In 1940 appeared Bertie Malmberg’s Ake and His World with Miss Cooney’s illustrations, and in 1941 the first of her own books, King of Wreck Island. “In the summer of 1942 I joined the W AAC, and later in that year married Guy Murchie, Jr., war correspondent and author.” For a while the Murchies with their small daughter lived in Belchertown, Massachusetts, on a co-operative farming venture. Later they bought a farm in Pepperell, Massachusetts, where they ran a children’s camp in the summers. In 1947, after divorcing Guy Murchie, Jr., Barbara Cooney went with her daughter and son to live in Waldoboro, Maine, and later in Acton, Massachusetts. In July, 1949, she married Dr. Charles Talbot Porter and returned to live in Pepperell where her husband has a general practice. She now has another son and daughter: Charles and Phoebe Ann. In the past eleven years Barbara Cooney has done illustrations for various magazines and anthologies and has illustrated thirty-five books.

Barbara Cooney 1917-ILUSTRATOR OF

Chanticleer and the Fox; Christmas in the Barn; Peter’s Long Walk; Where Have You Been? Etc.

Autobiographical sketch of Barbara Cooney:

MY twin brother and I were born in

Brooklyn, New York, where we lived for two weeks. Along with two younger brothers, we were brought up on Long Island during the school year and in Maine during the summer. The latter is still Mecca for .all of us, and we return each year if we are able.

My father was a stockbroker, but my mother was an artist. That I too\ am an artist is largely due to the tubes o~ paint, brushes, paper and other art suppIt~s that were always available to my mother chil-dren. As far back as I can remember, I could always entertain myself by drawing pictures. I continued to do so during my school and college (Smith ’38) years. Later I studied lithography and etching at the Art Students League in New York City.

At about this time I began illustrating and haven’t stopped since. With one exception: when my brothers joined the Army during World War II, I joined the WAC. During this period I married Guy Murchie, with whom I had two children, a girl named Gretel and a boy named Barnaby. I am now the wife of Dr. C. Talbot Porter, a general practitioner in Pepperell, Massachusetts. Two more children have been added to the family: Talbot Jr., and Phoebe. We live in a rambling old house surrounded by broad lawns, tall trees and gardens. I couldn’t ask for a pleasanter ivory tower. Possibly the term ivory tower is incorrect, for ivory tower doesn’t generally connote hustle and bustle, which this house is full of.

I am now working on my fiftieth book.

My being an illustrator is a highly satisfactory arrangement for me. Wives of country doctors catch only fleeting glimpses of their husbands. But I can be busy and happy working, still see my children even though I’m a “working mother,” and be right on hand when my husband returns at night.

Although I am probably something of a romantic, I am quite realistic. I draw only the things I know about. Indeed, I am unable to draw any other way. I am always as truthful as I can possibly be. I draw from life whenever possible, and do not invent facts or “suggest” with a vague line something I am not sure about. In spite of this, my pictures don’t look realistic; they always look like me, which bothers me. However, they are the truth-as I see it-and my attempt to communicate about the things that matter to me.

Links:http://www.lib.usm.edu/~degrum/html/research/findaids/cooney.htm

http://www.carolhurst.com/authors/bcooney.html

http://www.cooney.pagebooks.net/
Titles:

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN

CHRISTMAS IN THE BARN

LITTLE FIR TREE

AWAY WE GO

Bio:FLOYD COOPER

January 8, 1956- ILLUSTRATOR OF Grandpa’s Face, etc. Biographical sketch of Floyd Cooper:

FLOYD COOPER was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the oldest of four children. He was raised in Tulsa, and although he wanted to move to New York, he remained in Oklahoma for school, attending the University of Oklahoma; he had received a four-year scholarship with the stipulation that he attend an in-state institution. He graduated with a B.F.A. degree in 1980.

Cooper had begun his illustration career with freelance work while he was still a student, but upon graduation, he moved to Kansas City, Missouri, to work at Hallmark. Although he had an established position at Hallmark doing greeting card illustration, Cooper had his sights set on New York and a career as a freelance illustrator. He says, “Hallmark was a great place to work . . . but it’s hard to be around so many fuzzy bunnies without becoming one!” He apprenticed with illustrator Mark English, and the two of them held after-hours critiques to keep their portfolios updated and their work fresh. Cooper credits Mark English with helping him boost his confidence enough to make the move to New York. “He had a big impact on me,” says Cooper, who felt lucky to “have the good fortune to work side by side with the master.”

Moving to New York was not an easy step for Cooper. He had heard many things,

FLOYD COOPER

both good and bad, about the city. It was English who assured him it would be the best move for him and, says Cooper, “he was right!” Cooper finally made the big move in 1984.

When Cooper got to New York, he decided he’d like to go from advertising and corporate illustration to illustrating children’s books. It was at this point that he and his mentor parted ways. English had shunned picture books, saying it was a very difficult area to break into. In the hierarchy of illustrators, “fine artists look down on illustrators, and illustrators look down on kiddiebook illustrators,” says Cooper. However, he found it to be a stimulating outlet for his creativity, and so he pursued children’s book illustration.

It was both an exciting time and a difficult time for Cooper. After many rejections, he decided to get an agent. His first book, Grandpa 5 Face, was written by Eloise Greenfield. A Kirkusreview noted Cooper’s “realistic, full-color double spreads . . . in rich earth tones and vibrant colors. ” The review further stated, “Cooper makes an outstanding debut.” Grandpa’s Face was named a Notable Book of the Year by the American Library Association. It was also named a Notable Children’s Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies by a joint committee of the National Council on the Social Studies and the Children’s Book Council.

Some of Cooper’s other books include Coming Home: From the Life of Langston Hughes, of which a critic wrote in The New York Times Book Review, “This is a book that will no doubt touch many young readers, because in the text Mr. Cooper is honest about Hughes’s difficut childhood.” She also wrote that “the artist offers a vibrant picture of the community that surrounds Hughes’s family.”

Cooper moved to New Jersey in 1985. He says he left New York because his car kept getting broken into, and he didn’t want to give it up. Friends helped him find a place in New Jersey, where he lives with his wife, Velma, and his young son Dayton Michael, who also wants to be an illustrator. “New Jersey’s not bad,” he says, “It’ s still accessible to New York.”

Illustrating children’s books gives Cooper great satisfaction; he feels it is very important work. “I feel children are at the frontline in improving society,” he writes. “This might sound a little heavy, but it’s true. I feel children’s picture books playa role in counteracting all the violence and other negative images conveyed in the media.” Cooper also tries to make time for his other interests, like playing basketball and tennis. He has also done some toy designing for 01- mec, a corporation now owned by Hasbro. He designed an action figure called SunMan, a Black superhero. His wife has also designed some dolls for the company, which has a multicultural bent.

In addition, Cooper enjoys playing on his Macintosh computer. He and his wife now handle the agenting of his books themselves, keeping track of everything on their computer. He claims the past year was pretty hectic, but now they’re “getting the hang of it.” The Coopers also like to fravel. and they make an annual trip to Jamaica.

Two of Floyd Cooper’s books have been named Honor Books in the Coretta Scot64

King Awards, given by the American Library Association. Brown Honey and Broomwheat Tea won the honor in 1994 and Meet Danitra Brown won it in 1995. Grandpa s Face, which was published in a 1993 Spanish edition, La Cara de Abuelito, was named a Notable Children’s Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies by a joint committee of the Children’s Book Council and the National Council on the Social Studies. It also was named an American Library Association Notable Book of the Year, as was ChUa s Christmas Tree and Coming Home. Pass It On was also named a CBCj NCSS Notable Book. Cooper is working on companion volume to Brownwheat Tea, called Gingerbread Days, also by Joyce Carol Thomas. He was the featured speaker at the University of Oklahoma’s sixteenth annual Festival of Books conference held in October 1995.

SELECTED WORKS WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED: Coming Home: From the Life of Langston Hughes. 1994.

SELECTED WORKS ILLUSTRATED: Grandpa’s Face. by Eloise Greenfield. 1988; Chita’s Christmas Tree. by Elizabeth Fitzgerald Howard. 1989; Laura Charlotte. by Katherine O. Galbraith. 1990; The Girl Who Loved Caterpillars: A Twelfth-Century Tale from Japan. adapted by Jean Merrill. 1992; Be Good to Eddie Lee. by Virginia Fleming. 1993; Brown Honey in Broomwheat Tea. by Joyce Carol Thomas. 1993; From Miss Ida’s Porch. by Sandra Belton. 1993; Pass It On: African-American Poetry for Children. selected by Wade Hudson. 1993; Meet Danitra Brown. by Nikki Grimes. 1994; Coyote Walks on Two Legs. by Gerald Hausman. 1995.Links:http://www.eduplace.com/kids/hmr/mtai/fcooper.html

COSGRAVE, JOHN O’HARA II •

Born October 10, 1908, in San Francisco, where his childhood was spent. Attended Marin Junior College, University of California, California School of Fine Arts, and the studio of Andre Lhote, Paris.

As a boy John O’Hara Cosgrave II haunted the San Francisco docks where the ships come in. “I had my first boat, a remodeled Navy twenty.eight·foot whaleboat, at fourteen,” he writes. “At eighteen I re·built another whaleboat and sailed it until I left San Francisco in 1930 to go to Paris. I spent two years there, painting at Lhote’s in the morning, and in the afternoon drawing the old houses of Paris. In the summer I went to seaports on the coast of France and painted ships. I also took a tour of France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Holland and Belgium, drawing ships wherever they were to be found.” Upon his return to this country, Mr. Cosgrave began a career which has included Christmas cards for the American Artists Group, book jackets and book illustration, and illustration and covers for such magazines as Motor Boating, Yachting, Life and Fortune. In 1938 he illustrated Log of Christopher Columbus’ First Voyage to America, and in 1943 a selection of Robert Frost’s poems, Come In, and Other Poems, and Clara Ingram Judson’s Donald McKay, Designer of Clipper Ships. Soon after his marriage to Mary Silva, a children’s book editor, he built a very modern house on Patuisset Island in Pocasset, Massachusetts, ” called the Crows Nest by the Cape Codders because it sits up on columns in order to get the view of Red Brook Harbor and Hen Cove. I own a fifteen foot Mercury fin keel racing sloop in which I go sailing and fishing.” For several years Mr. Cosgrave has been working on an American maritime history which will include over one hundred and fifty portraits of ships and for which he has made two trips to Europe to get authentic informa· tion on early ships. The Cosgraves divide their time between Cape Cod and their home in Brooklyn, New York.

Cosgrave John O’Hara Cosgrave II
1908-

ILLUSTRATOR OF:Wind, Sand and Stars; Come In; Carry On, Mr. Bowditch; Let the Best Boat Win; Etc.

Autobiographical sketch of John O’Hara Cosgrave II:

I HAD the good fortune to be born in San Francisco, a city almost surrounded by water. My earliest recollection is one of dashing along a beach, splashing in the waves. Since then, whenever possible, I have been on the water or making pictures of it.

At the age of fifteen, I and three high school friends bought an old Navy whaleboat, named her Moby Dick and rigged her as a cat schooner, sailing her all over the large and often treacherous waters of San Francisco Bay. We had a shipwreck, a wild experience in a gale which nearly drowned us, and as many adventures as boys learning to sail manage to find. During vacations, the four of us got jobs on laid-up square-rigp;ers, paintinp; and working on the rigging. When the Moby Dick became worn out from hard use, I bought another whaleboat and rigged her as a ketch. She was called Typee and probably was the slowest boat on the Bay. The installation of a one-lung, make-andbreak ignition engine made her a serviceable sailer. Every free week end was spent sailing up and down the rivers and over the bays.

At Lowell High School, I rowed on the crew, and we were the Bay champions for three years. I went to Marin Junior College which was very handy to the places where I kept my boat and afforded. as well, a long ferryboat ride as a bonus. After that, I went to the University of California, majoring in art.

In 1930 I left for Paris to study painting with Andre Lhote for two years. While there, I spent a lot of time wandering around the city sketching, and in the Musee de la Marine at the Louvre studying the models and pictures of ships. All the seaports of France fascinated me and I still have quantities of notebooks filled with drawings of ships and scenes of all the harbors I frequented.

I came to New York in 1932 and started doing book jackets, illustrating books, doing magazine illustrating and advertisements.

Drafted in 1943, I endured a year in the infantry and the rest of the war in OSS. The State Department sent me to San Francisco to do charts and graphs for the beginnings of the United Nations. On the happy day of release, I tore home to Columbia Heights, in Brooklyn, New York. Ours is an ancient house, full of books relating to the sea, cookbooks (cooking is a hobby), pictures of ships, and all kinds of equipment for painting. A two-block walk puts me almost in the East River bay where I can revel in the shipping.

Summers are spent on Cape Cod, where my wife and I sail our Herreshoff Bull’s Eye sloop, di~ quahogs, and fish for scup in Buzzards Bay.

DAVID DIAZ ILLUSTRATOR OF Smoky Night, etc. Biographical sketch of David Diaz:

DA VID DIAZ is an illustrator who had worked for magazines and for corporate clients for about fifteen years before he illustrated his first picture book, Neighborhood Odes by Gary So to. For his second, Smoky Night by Eve Bunting, he won the prestigious Randolph Caldecott Medal, presented by the American Library Association in 1995.

David Diaz met his future wife in the eleventh grade, in art class. Although he already had a girlfriend, Cecelia was not deterred, and began a “daily sarcasm session” to catch his attention. Eventually, the banter increased to the point where Diaz says that the focus of his time in art class was to see how much he could distract her from

r weavings and batik work. This friend’,p and romance led to the marriage of the ‘0 artists. “Cecelia opened my eyes to vi vcolor, and I began to use it,” Diaz stated the Caldecott Medal acceptance speech presented to an American Library Asso,tion audience in 1995.

Diaz had a wonderful high-school art kcher, Sandra Tobe, who motivated her ;; ‘,ents. She encouraged them to enter ,petitions with their work, and in this

:y planted the idea that one could be sucul and make money from doing art. ‘.introduced Diaz to Duane Hanson, deby Diaz as a “hyperrealist sculptor.” became Hanson’s apprentice for four , time spent both in high school and, ” at a school of advertising and design. working for Hanson, Diaz was ex-

to superrealist movement in art and , self drawn to it. At one point he with a technique of drawing tiny

with a sharp pencil to create a graduquality; however, one of the pieces, ing six inches square, took sixty to hours to complete. Diaz began to another method of artwork, and exted with many.

,Diaz saw a show of German Ex-pressionist art at the Guggenheim Museum. He considers this artwork an influence upon his own, and he also credits William Steig’s work. He was impressed by “the depth of characterization he conveyed in so few lines,” and as Diaz studied his work and followed the course of it over Steig’s career, he noticed how Steig moved from “tightly rendered pieces toward a looser line.” This is a course Diaz then developed in his own artwork.

It was in 1979 that Diaz began to show his portfolio in order to get work. He and his wife moved from Florida to California, and while he went to work as a clerk in a filmprocessing business, he sold his first illustration. He received twenty-five dollars for a piece for the San Diego Reader. Money and food were scarce, and the automobile the couple drove was so decrepit, they made it a practice never to park it in front of a client’s office. The early years of his career and the variety of the assignments allowed Diaz to experiment with many mediums, including oils, pen and ink, watercolor paints, and woodcuts. When he finished a job for a client, he often created a small work of art from the leftover materials, and presented it to his employer as a gift. They were so well received that Diaz realized that they were effective promotional pieces, and he and his wife began to expand them into limited-edition books that they collaborated upon at the end of each year.

Persistent in pursuing work, the design and art jobs that Diaz procured totalled over five thousand over time. In 1989, he began to work with what he calls “a series of bold, loose, brush-stroke faces.” He worked on the style for about three years and then made a trip to the Amazon River in Brazil in 1992. The loose sketches he created on this trip led him to create a style and a collage technique he used in the Diaz’ next year-end book, Sweet Peas.

His first book for children came about when Harcourt Brace editor Diane D’ Andrade asked him to illustrate Neighborhood Odes. When Diaz gave her

DIANE DILLON March 13, 1933- and LEO DILLON March 2, 1933-

ILLUSTRATORS OF Ashanti to Zulu. etc. Autobiographical sketch of Leo and Diane Dillon:

WE BELIEVE in magic. To sit down with a blank piece of paper and see scenes and characters take form . . . it is magic. There’s a voice inside guiding, saying “no, that’s not right change that line . add a bit here take away there ” Children accept these things. As adults, we lose the faith. The best things come when we let go and accept the guidance from that voice. Maybe that’s why we love doing children’s books … knowing that they (the children) will understand the zany logic and eagerly accept the impossible.

We came to children’s books after many years of adult book jackets, album covers, and advertising art, and found a freedom we didn’t know before. When doing a book or record cover, everything must be summed up in one picture. In a children’s book there are pages and pages to build an idea-to add nuances and visual comments.

There are many levels of recognition and understanding. A book can be read again and again with new discoveries: expressions and details that were missed the first time will be discovered the second or third or fourth time.

It has been a form of magic in working together as one artist, and we created a third artist. What takes form on paper is a surprise to both of us and something neither of us would have come up with individually. We met at Parsons School of Design and competed with each other until we joined forces. It didn’t come easy, this working together. Two egos and one piece of paper are a dangerous combination!

Now, when we sit down and talk about what we’re going to do, we let the ideas fly until one triggers excitement in both of us. From that point on, it’s an adventure.

One of the greatest gifts, we think, is to love what you are doing. And we do. We don’t work for children; we work for the child in each of us. Children are little people, as complicated and mysterious as any adult. Unfortunately, too many adults feel that things must be simplified for children. We try not to fall into that trap. We must please ourselves first, and if we’ve been honest with ourselves and have worked with love, the reader-child or adultwill know that.

Our reward is the respect of our peers, the joy of children, and the freedom we take in listening to our own drummer.

Leo and Diane Dillon have won the Caldecott Medal twice, in 1976 for Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears, and in 1977 for Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions. Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears, written by Verna Aardema, also received a Brooklyn Art Books for Children citation in 1977. The illustrators have also received the Hamilton King A ward for excellence in illustration from the Society of Illustrators in New York, and the Hugo Award for science fiction and fantasy art.

Ashanti to Zulu was also named an American Library Association Notable Book, a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book, and a New York Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year 1976. Song of the Boat, too, was a 1976 Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book, in 1976. Who’s in Rabbit’s House? was a Notable Book and also received a Lewis Carroll Shelf Award for 1978.

Appearing in the Children’s Book Council’s Showcase collection were Whirlwind Is a Ghost Dancing (in 1975) and Behind the Back of the Mountain (in 1974). The latter as also included in the 1973/74 American Institute of Graphic Arts Show, as was The Third Gift; Ashanti to Zulu was in the 1976 show.

Leo Dillon was born in Brooklyn, and

Diane Dillon in Glendale, California. She studied at Los Angeles City College and at Skidmore College. Both attended American Institute of Graphic Arts workshops, the Parsons School of Design, and the School of Visual Arts.

The Dillons have a teenage son, Lee.

SELECfED WORKS ILLUSTRATED: Hakon of Rogen’s Saga, by Erik Christian Haugaard, 1963; The Ring in the Prairie: A Shawnee Legend, by John Bierhorst (editor), 1970; The Untold Tale, by Erik Christian Haugaard, 1971; Behind the Back of the Mountain: Black Folktales from Southern Africa, by Verna Aardema, 1973; The Third Gift, by Jan Carew, 1974; Whirlwind Is a Ghost Dancing, by Natalia Belting, 1974; The Hundred Penny Box, by Sharon Bell Mathis, 1975; Song of the Boat, by Lorenz Graham, 1975; Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears, by Verna Aardema, 1975; Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions, by Margaret W. Musgrove, 1976; Who’s in Rabbit’s House?: A Masai Tale, by Verna Aardema, 1977; Children of the Sun, by Jan Carew, 1980.

ABOUT: Kingman, Lee and others, comps. Illustrators of Children’s Books: 1967-1976; Pitz, Henry C. 200 Years of American Illustration; Preiss, Byron .. ed. The Art of Leo and Diane Dillon; Something About the Author, Vol. 15; Graphis No. 156, 1979; Horn Book August 1976, August 1977; School Library Journal March 1977.

DOWLING, VICTOR J.

Born April .21, 1906, in New York City. Childhood was spent in the Bronx, New York. Attended Holy Cross Col1ege, Worcester, Massachusetts; National Academy School of Fine Arts, New York City.

Victor J. Dowling writes of himself, ” Animals and books and pictures were prominent elements in a happy childhood. For years, when we were small, my father read to us every night at bed-time. (Beatrix Potter and Howard Pyle were favorite author-illustrators.) On Sundays he often took us to the Bronx Zoo, always a wonderful event for us. Summers in the country further stimulated our interest in nature, as did the squirrel, chipmunks, etc., which we brought back to the city and added to our backyard zoo. I read avidly every book on animals in my father’s extensive library. I pored endlessly, too, over the many volumes of world history, illustrated with the academic pictures of the last century, and in the process acquired a good general knowledge of the subject. The numerous pictures on our walls were mainly color prints of similarly academic paintings. A long line of them hung along the stairway, Landseer, Yeames, Riviere, etc. These men are rather despised by art authorities today but they were fascinating illustrators. I viewed them daily for thirty years without ever tiring of them. Somehow I can’t conceive a modern child being similarly charmed by a line of Braques and Picassos. When I started to draw as a small boy I copied the pictures in

the books. Howard Pyle and Charles Livingston Bun with their clean precise line were the easiest to follow. My father encouraged my artistic efforts with Vere Foster’s Drawing Books on Animals.” Since he has been working professionally most of Mr. Dowling’S commissions have been for animal or historical subjects. He is a bachelor and has lived for the past twenty years on a small farm in Columbia County, New York, “where the winters are long and hard, and the spring correspondingly precious.”

RICHARD EGIELSKI

July 16, 1952- ILLUSTRATOR

Biographical sketch of Richard Egie1ski:

RICHARD EGIELSKI was born in Queens, New York, and grew up in Maspeth, Queens. His first artistic influences were comic books and movies on television. Books were definitely not an influence on his picture-book art; he recalls discovering picture books at an age when he was too old for them. He attended a strict parochial school until he took the initiative to enter the public school system. He submitted a portfolio in hopes of being admitted to the High School of Art and Design, and he was. It was there that he realized he wanted to be an artist.

Egie1ski attended Pratt Institute from 1970 to 1971, where he felt out of place, as the painting program concentrated on Abstract Expressionism, and he was working towards becoming a magazine illustrator. He transferred to the Parsons School of Design in New York, where he took a course in picture books with Maurice Sendak. In picture-book illustration, he had found “a discipline that answered all my creative needs,” as he said in his Caldecott A ward acceptance speech; and he attributes this, in

part, to his love of movies and the cinematic flow of picture-book narrative. He began to work professionally while at school; his drawings appeared in magazines and in New Times magazine. He graduated in 1974. Egielski met Denise Sadutti, also a book illustrator, at Parsons, and they were married May 8, 1977.

He did not have too much success at first with his book illustration. He took his portfolio around to publishers, and few found it suitable for the kinds of stories they wanted illustrated. Since Egielski didn’t want to write his own stories, it was not until he was introduced to Arthur Yorinks, through Maurice Sendak, that he found a true collaborator.

Arthur Yorinks has said that music is very important to his writing; he will bring to Richard Egielski one or several stories and Egielski can choose one; Y orinks often tells him what piece of music he was listening to while working on the story. The books Yorinks has written and that they have completed together are sometimes inspired by writers such as Kafka, whose Metamorphosis influenced Louis the Fish. Egielski sometimes generally discusses influences with Yorinks during the illustrating of the book, which he considers unusual in the author-artist working relationship.

Hey, Al won the 1987 Caldecott Medal awarded by the American Library Association. It was also a 1986 ALA Notable Book. Louis the Fish was a Reading Rainbow book. Egielski received a plaque from the 1985 Biennale of Illustrations Bratislavia for It Happened in Pinsk. The Porcelain Pagoda was a 1976 American Institute of Graphic Arts Book Show book. A videotape about the working relationship of Yorinks and Egielski is distributed by Farrar, Straus & Giroux Publishers.

SELECTED WORKS ILLUSTRATED: The Porcelain Pagoda, by F. N. Monjo, 1976; The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring, by John Bellairs, 1976; Sid and Sol, by Arthur Yorinks, 1977; I Should Worry, I Should Care, by Miriam Chaikin, 1979; Louis the Fish, by Arthur Yorinks, 1980; It Happened in Pinsk, by Arthur Yorinks, 1983; Lower! Higher! You’re a Liar!, by Miriam Chaikin, 1984; Amy’s Eyes, by Richard Kennedy, 1985; The Little Father, by Gelett Burgess, 1985; Hey, AI, by Arthur Yorinks, 1986; Bravo, Minski, by Arthur Yorinks, 1988; Friends Forever, by Miriam Chaikin, 1988; The Tub People, by Pam Conrad, 1989.

Links:

io:SARI, pseudo (Anne Fleur)

Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where her childhood was spent. Attended St. Joseph’s School, Lancaster, Lancaster Business College, and Art Students League, New York.

Sari who has also illustrated under her real name, Anne Fleur, writes that her desire to be an artist was strong but that there was no early trainin~ in art schools. “Association with artist friends led me to study at horne. It became my chief interest. Later, after corning to New York, I was able to study at the Art Students League. Several years were spent in advertising work but an interest in drawing children got me started in illustrating children’s books, my first ones being Ten Little Servants and White Goat both written and illustrated by Sari.” In addition to trade books she has done a great deal of illustrating in the text book field. She has never lost interest in her first love, easel painting, for which she manages to make time even in the midst of crowding commissions. Anne Fleur lives in Mount Vernon, New York.

Richard Floethe 1901-

ILLUSTRATOR OFSong of the Pines; Mr. Bell Invents the Telephone; Ballet Shoes; Circus Shoes; Etc.

Autobiographical sketch of Richard Floethe (or FlOthe) :

I WAS born in Essen, Germany. My father was an army man and he hoped to have me follow in his footsteps. However, my artistic bent seemed to be obvious from a very early age. I was always defacing my textbooks with pictures and receiving the customary scoldings for so doing. In preparatory school I did my first business in art. I sold landscapes and portraits to my schoolmates in exchange for much coveted sweets. This was during World War I.

When I got out of school I found Germany was out of an army. The military life was thus closed to me and I turned my serious thoughts toward learning to be an artist. I studied art in Munich and at the Bauhaus. I soon found that my talents and my interests led me to the graphic arts. One of my teachers at this time prophesied that I would eventually be a book illustrator.

I came to the United States in 1929 to visit a good friend who had preceded me here. I planned to stay one year. I have never left. I have become an American citizen, married an American girl, and am raising two very American sons. My wife says I have an American sense of humor. Anyway, I feel as if I belonged!

In 1934 I won the Limited Editions Club national contest for illustrators with my drawings for Charles de Coster’s Tyl UlenspiegZ. Again in 1937 my illustrations for Pinocchio won another Limited Editions award. Since I have been in America I have illustrated over sixty books, mostly for children.

In the fall of 1956 it was my great pleasure to see published two books by my wife (Louise Lee Floethe), with illustrations by me-If I Were Captain, a picture book for small children, and The Winning Colt, a horse story for children from eight to twelve. This was the beginning of a collaboration which I hope will prosper through the years. Other titles written by my wife and illustrated by me are: The Farmer and His Cows, Terry Sets Sail, and The Cowboy on the Ranch.

During my years as an artist I have ill ustrated many subjects. I am probably happiest when drawing anything to do with boats and horses and farms. These things have been and are closest to me. Living in Florida as we do, close to the water, sailing is the hobby of the whole Floethe family.

Beside my illustrating, I am an instructor at the Ringling School of Art. I enjoy this contact with young upcoming artists and hope that I may pass on to them some of the experience I have garnered through the years.

Floethe: PURT a

FLOETHE, RICHARD *

Born September 2, 1901, in Essen, Germany. Childhood was spent in Germany. Attended Realschule, Pyrmont; Pedagogium Oberrealschule, Giessen; studied art in Munich, Dortmund, and Weimar.

Richard F10ethe early showed his artistic propensities by drawing caricatures of his teachers in his school books. “I find it difficult to identify the roots out of which my work has grown,” he writes. “All I know is that from earliest memory a pencil presented itself as something to draw with and I have been using One ever since. After leaving art school, where I specialized in the graphic arts, I was commissioned to execute a large mural at the International Exposition in Cologne in 1928. Shortly after its completion I sailed for America where I have since resided. In 1950 I moved with my family to Sarasota, Florida, where I am an instructor at the Ringling School of Art. My wife is a writer, and together we are working on a series of children’s books.” The Floethes have two children. esides many illustrations for both children’s and adults’ books, Richard Floethe has executed jacket designs, displays, posters, advertising and other forms of commercial art. In the field of fine arts he is known for his water colors and prints, some of which are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum, St. Louis and Philadelphia Museums, and the Spencer Collection of the New York Public Library.

Links:

GERGELY, TlBOR •

Born August 3, 1900, in Budapest, Hungary, where his childhood was spent.

Tibor Gergely, much of whose life has been spent in Austria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, says that the roots of his work are in the peasant life which he observed in his early youth and in the following years. He never attended any professional schools but is entirely self taught, his style of painting being determined by the artistic achievement of the” Paris School” of modem art. As a painter he has had exhibitions in European and American cities. For many years he worked with Hungarian, Austrian and German newspapers and magazines, doing portraits, cartoons and illustrations, in addition to painting murals, executing stage decorations and illustrating books. He carne to the United States in 1939 and now lives permanently in New York City, specializing in commercial art and the illustration of children’s books. In the forties he illustrated two books by Georges Duplaix, Topsy Turvy Circus, 1940, and Merry Shipwreck, 1942; Walter Edmonds’ Two Logs Crossing, 1943, and others. In recent years he has illustrated a large number of Little Golden Books, and he did full-color pictures for Margaret Wise Brown’s Wheel on the Chimney

DIANE GOODE

September 14, 1949- ILLUSTRATOR OF When I Was Young in the Mountains, etc.

Autobiographical sketch of Diane Capuozzo Goode:

I WAS BORN in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in the suburbs. My father is of Neapolitan descent and my mother is French. Our family is widespread but emotionally close.

When I was an infant I made my first trip to Corsica, my mother’s home, and thereaf- ler spent many happy summers. We traveled abroad often as a family and my early exposure to the great museums of Europe Dad a profound effect on me. To say I was n awe of the old masters would be an unlerstatement.

As children, my brother and I were sel- 10m permitted to watch television and so I level oped an early reading habit. I was a ery serious child. I took pleasure in draw- 19 for as long as I can remember.

I received my B.A. in Fine Arts in 1972 om Queens College, where I also met my Ilure husband David. I took a year off to lend les Beaux-Arts in Aix-en-Provence, here I gained more from the cafes and .stry shops than I did from the studios. I iolved then to make illustration my proision.

[n 1973 I married David and we moved Los Angeles. Curiously enough, it was afthis move that I had my first job iIIus-ling a picture book for a New York press. earned color separation over the teleme. I had no knowledge of commercial I was lucky to have a patient publisher

I a very supportive husband.

lur son, Peter, was born in 1978 and his ience has added much to my work. He

is a constant reminder of who my audience really is.

Illustrating is a great privilege and a pleasure. I give it all I’ve got. If I fall short, it is not from lack of trying. Fortunately, the amount of work involved in each book almost insures continued growth and improvement. If practice does not make perfect, at least it makes better, and my aim is to keep improving.

Diane Goode taught in New York City public high schools in 1972 and 1973 and taught book illustration at the University of California at Los Angeles from 1976 to 1978. She has illustrated twenty-four record album covers and had her work exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1982.

When I Was Young in the Mountains was a 1983 Caldecott Honor Book and an American Book A wards nominee in the hardcover picture book category. Goode received an award in 1975 from the Southern California Council on Literature for Children and Young People for The Selchie’s Seed and Little Pieces of the West Wind, and one in 1979 for The Dream Eater. Tattercoats was named a Notable Book in 1976 by the American Library Association. The Good-Hearted Youngest Brother was named a Notable Children’s Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies by the joint committee of the National Council for the Social Studies and the Children’s Book Council in 1981.

SELECTED WORKS ILLUSTRATED: Little Pieces of the West Wind, by Christian Garrison, 1975; The Selchie’s Seed, by Shulamith Oppenheim, 1975; Tattercoats: An Old English Tale, by Flora Annie Steele, 1976; Beauty and the Beast, by Madame LePrince de Beaumont, 1978; The Dream Eater, by Christian Garrison, 1978; The Good-Hearted Youngest Brother, retold and translated by Emoke de Papp Severo, 1981; The Unicorn and the Plow, by Louise Moeri, 1982; When I Was Young in the Mountains, by Cynthia Rylant, 1982; Peter Pan, by]. M. Barrie, 1983.

ABOUT: Kingman, Lee and others, comps. Illustrators of Children’s Books: 1967-1976; Something About the Author, Vol. 15.

HURD, CLEMENT *

Born 1908, in New York. Childhood was spent there and in Locust, New Jersey. Attended St. Paul’s School, Yale College, and Yale Architectural School. Also studied painting in Paris for two years, chiefly in Leger’s studio.

Upon his return to the United States, Clement Hurd devoted himself to mural painting and designing. His first illustrating for a child’s book was done for Gertrude Stein’s The World is Round, published in 1939. William R. Scott had asked Miss Stein to write a children’s book for them. Upon receipt of this manuscript, they invited several artists to submit drawings which were sent to Paris for Miss Stein’s choice. She selected those of Clement Hurd. Since that time he has worked almost entirely for children’s books. Mr. Hurd joined the Army Air Force in 1941 to do camouflage, but switched eventually to Emergency Rescue, and from that went into Education and Intelligence work. After the War he and his wife, Edith Thacher Hurd, spent most of their time for several years on their farm in Vermont, ” until the winters seemed to grow longer and harder and we found ourselves looking for reasons to get away from them.” They spent the winter of 1950-51 and the spring of 1952 in Williamsburg, Virginia, doing two children’s books on the Restoration. The next two winters they divided between Los Gatos, California, and North Ferrisburg, Vermont. In 1954, when their son had reached school age, they moved permanently to Mill Valley, California. Clement Hurd has illustrated thirty-three children’s books, eighteen of which were written by Mrs. Hurd, seven by Margaret Wise Brown, and five by himself.

CLEMENT AND EDITH THACHER HURD

puses, and even foreign Lotharios that pinched under water.

Margaret Wise Brown saw some of the studies for these “Perils” and suggested that I try my hand at illustrating for children. At that time she was acting as editor for the publisher William R. Scott and just getting into high gear in her own writing. My first book was Bumble Bugs and Elephants, which was said to be the youngest book then in existence. The next year I won a very informal competition to illustrate Gertrude Stein’s only published book for children, The World Is Round. All the illustrators who were working for the Scotts at that time wanted the privilege of illustrating this book. It was decided therefore that sample illustrations should be sent to Miss Stein in Paris. Fortunately she chose minel Fortunately not only for the privilege of doing the work but also because the advance helped to finance my marriage to Edith Thacher in June 1939.

Since then I have illustrated more than thirty books, the majority of which have been written by my wife. I have also been active in the decorative arts and painting. However, the illustration of children’s books has been the major line except for the three years that I spent in the South Pacific trying to camouflage a war that didn’t want to take time or trouble to be camouflaged.

My wife and I lived for many years in Vermont, where our son was born in 1949. Since then we have gradually gravitated away from the long winters there until now we are permanent residents of Mill Valley, California, near the beautiful bay of San Francisco.

Edith Thacher Hurd 1910-

AUTHOR OF

Caboose; Galleon from Manila; Benny, the Bulldozer; Engine, Engine, No.9; Etc.

Autobiographical sketch of Edith Thacher Hurd:

WRITING has always been fun for me.

lt was lucky that I went to a wonderfully progressive school in Kansas City, Missouri, where we were given lots of time to write and to act and do all sorts of creative things. I loved it when we were given the writing of a story as homework. This was particularly true when we studied the Middle Ages. I must have been about twelve at the time. My stories were full of knights in armor who lived in great castles and my favorite author, of course, was Howard Pyle. I guess this makes me rather a strange twelve-year-old girl by modern standards for I gather the young today care more for knights with hot rods than jousting sticks. Nevertheless, I had two friends who must have been equally strange for we shared our love of writing and reading and the three of us seemed to live in our own world and a very delightful and creative one it was.

Both my mother and father were great readers. Meals were always a time for some member of the family to share the book he was reading at the time. When my father was away on business, my mother often read out loud to my two brothers and myself at the dinner table. We went through most of The Pickwick Papers in this way. Why my mother did not gradually starve to death I have never quite understood.

On leaving school I went to Switzerland to study for one year. Here we were not encouraged to do anything creative. Nevertheless, I was fortunate enough to have as a teacher a person so creative herself that this ing, I never graduated from high school but went around the world instead. I suppose the trips in Europe, looking at the famous paintings, gave me a sense of and for good composition, and as I can’t draw I used a camera when I wished to illustrate a book. I took a few piano lessons, then studied the harp, but as I did not like to practice I can’t play. I did enjoy going to the symphonieshence my book Tune-Up. Listening to classical records is my favorite pastime and inspiration.

I went for six weeks to a class at Whittier College in child psychology and nursery school training. It was one of my assignments to write what a child did and said for a period of an hour. Naturally, I chose my two sons as subjects and found out that they loved “bugs.” I also found out that there was no book on the subject. So, with the aid of the encyclopedia, I wrote one, Let’s Go Outdoors. The two boys on the jackets of my nature books are my sons.

Aircraft u.s.A. is the outcome of my older son’s going into the Air Force. My younger son is in the Navy, and at present, a great help in answering questions about the harbor, the subject of my current book. My daughter was a guinea pig for Let’s Go to the Brook, but now that she is in her teens I shall have to look to my two sons’ daughters for more inspiration.

You might say that I “come by” writing naturally. Both my father and grandfather wrote religious books. They were clergymen. My mother’s mother was a Beecher, related to Harriet Beecher Stowe. I use my maiden name, Huntington, as a pen name, and also legally since my divorce.

Clement Hurd 1908-

AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR OF

The Race; Run, Run, Run; The Merry Chase ILLUSTRATOR OF

The Runaway Bunny; Caboose; Etc.

Autobiographical sketch of Clement Hurd:

IN looking back over my childhood, it al-

ways surprises me that I didn’t start painting and drawing until I was about fifteen. I started at boarding school under the influence of a npainting and drawing have always played a vital part in my life.

Sometimes I wonder if I wouldn’t have responded sooner if, in my childhood, I had had the enlightened opportunities for free painting at school and at home that children have today. My only memory of “art class” was at a private school in New York, where, at the age of about eight, we modeled a lion rampant from a cast about six inches high. The whole class worked on it for several months and the teacher would correct each boy’s work each day so that when the finished product was cast and proudly taken home, every lion was “perfect.”However, looking back in general I believe I had a happy and certainly a very secure childhood in New York City. I was born there and grew up on Sixty-eighth Street until I was sent off to boarding school at the age of thirteen. In the summers we stayed near the seashore in New Jersey and led a free, gregarious life as there were five children in my family and four double first cousins next door.After five years at St. Paul’s School, I progressed to Yale and while there decided to head for architecture, viewing it as a practical compromise between painting and business. However, after one postgraduate year at the Yale School of Architecture I decided to shoot the works and become an artist, so I went abroad to study painting in Paris. There in two years I learned a lot about art and life, particularly from the painting classes under Fernand Leger and partly from being exposed to French civilization and the wealth of European art treasures. In fact, I sincerely believe that I absorbed more education in those two years than in all my prior formal training.In the autumn of 1933, the depression having hit home, I returned to New York and set out to be a self-supporting artist. I painted murals in bathrooms and once in a while even murals in dining rooms. I designed needlework to order for a wool shop called the Knit-a-Bitl I even hand-painted a few lampshades. In fact, I was doing what is known as free-lancing or executing any art work that anyone wanted. I even handhooked two stair carpets. One of my pleasantest jobs was painting the inside of an octagonal bathhouse in Greenwich, Connecticut. On the ceiling I portrayed “The Perils of Bathing,” such as crabs and octo- quality could not help spilling over a bit despite the rigid school pattern. She filled me with excitement for painting, the history of art, European history, and French literature. I was unconscious of learning anything. I just absorbed and this contact became the background for my choosing fine arts as my chief study at Radcliffe College.To write as a profession was not an idea that had ever entered my wildest dreams. I had never met an author and the fact that one could make a living out of anything that seemed so close to just having fun seemed incredible. So, on leaving college in the depths of the Depression (1933), I took the first opening I could find and accepted a scholarship at the Bank Street College of Education in New York City to prepare myself to be a teacher. Here again luck was with me for I found that the Bank Street College was full of exciting and creative people. This was no humdrum teachers’ college, filling its students with dust-dry facts. We were made to listen to and look at real live children. Then we were told to use our heads in thinking about teaching them. We were not given stacks of books but whatever creative possibilities we had, be they ever so slight, were encouraged and nurtured. At last, to my amazement, mine flowered when I had my first book accepted by a publisher while I was still studying at the Writers’ Laboratory at the Bank Street School.This was exciting. With the idea of the fun and the possibilities very much in my mind, I kept on teaching but now combined it with writing. I began to write books that I felt children wanted at certain ages. They were not whimsical tales but tough old streamlined-train stories, stories about bulldozers, and fire engines, the stuff that a sixyear-old boy’s imaginative play is made of.Then one day I met a young artist who had just come back from studying art in Paris for two years. He too was interested in children’s books, as an illustrator. Even before we were married, in 1939, we were already writing and illustrating children’s books together. Since then we h~e created many, over forty now, I guess, and we seem to do more and more each year. Our house is full of the young, friends of our son, and that makes it fun for we gear our books to their interests, except of course when we take time off for a teen-age novel or a purelyfanciful tale such as The Cat from Telegraph Hill. We wrote this when nostalgic for the city we both love best in all the world, San Francisco.We live very close to this beautiful city now, in Mill Valley, but each summer we return to Vermont which was our home for many years.We go back to a very small house in the foothills of the Green Mountains because it’s hard to break the Vermont habit.Born November 12,1917, in Windsor, Vermont. Childhood winters were spent in New York City, summers in Maine. Attended City and Country School, Walden School and Lincoln School, New York; Oberlin CoIIege, Oberlin, Ohio.From her home, Robinhood Farm, Robinhood, Maine, Dahlov Ipcar writes, “I have been painting since earliest childhood. My parents, William and Marguerite Zorach, are both artists. From the beginning I was surrounded by creative activitypainting, sculpting, batiking and embroidering – so that art came naturally to me. I remember our walls were painted with the garden of Eden, and at the age of seven I started a frieze that travelled around my room, full of large and fanciful animals, bright colored horses and ostriches and dinosaurs. My parents never tried to direct me or give me instruction in art. They both felt that academic training had hampered and misdirected their art, and they wanted mine to develop as naturally as possible. I never attended art school. The schools I attended were all • progressive ‘. Perhaps through all this I have managed to keep a little of the child’s’ natural’ approach to painting and fresh view point. At least, I like to think so. I was married at eighteen, and since then my husband and I have been living on our farm in Maine the year round. He was an accountant who didn’t like the business world. He now runs our small dairy farm, and I help with the farm work, paint pictures, illustrate books, keep house, cook and take care of our two boys. We all enjoy our life on the farm, even though it is hard physical work. As an artist I am happy to be surrounded by the beauty of field and forest and animal life. All these things are part of my life and my pictures.” Mrs. Ipcar

has had seven one-man shows in New York City, her work is represented in a number of museums, including the Whitney and the Metropolitan, and she has done several murals.

AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR OF Three Jovial Huntsmen, etc.

Autobiographical sketch of Susan Jeffers:

MY career as an artist began in a tiny school in Oakland, New Jersey, when I was chosen.to paint a history mural with the usual Egyptians harvesting in muddy tempera fields. I suspect that I was selected as much for my ability to keep poster paint from running, as for my drawing talent. Yet I was on my way. I

went on to Valentine’s Day calendars, fire prevention posters, and Easter bunnies.

Happily for me, I had a very kind mother. She spent hours teaching me how to look at things. She showed me how to make objects appear round or Hat and how to mix paint. Best of all she gave me a feeling of immense joy in my work.

In my senior year of high school I chose Pratt Institute for my art education. There I associated with dedicated artists for the first time in my life. I remember slipping into Richard Lindner’s illustration class twenty minutes late one day hoping to be unobserved. He stopped the class and with great deliberation turned to me and said reproachfully, “Young woman, art is a love affair.” I had never tought of art in those terms before, but that is how I have thought of it since.

After graduation in 1964 I worked in three publishing houses beginning with the simplest jobs; repairing type, pasting up illustrations, and designing books and jackets. I developed a concrete knowledge of children’s books there and began to feel again the love I had for them as a child. As I worked on other artists’ books, I became more and more impatient to create them myself.

It was rather frightening to think of working free-lance but it was the only alternative. I needed the freedom of my own time. I managed to make enough to live on and soon began my first book in 1968, The Buried Moon. At about this time I also began a studio with Rosemary Wells. Together we worked on jackets and books, pooling our talents and ideas. It was wonderful for inspiration and encouragement and espeCially laughter.

My next book was The Three Jovial Huntsmen which took three years to complete. I actually did the book from start to finish twice. The first version was a terrible disappOintment on press and the decision was made not to publish it. I took the next year off to mull things over and teach art at the Wiltwyck School for Boys. There was something compelling to me about that book, however, that I could not forget, and I decided to begin again. The second version was a success and was wonderfully rewarded with a Caldecott Honor Book citation in 1974.

All the Pretty Horses followed. Surely the most effortless book I may ever do, it flowed directly from the talks I used to have with my sister when we were very young just before we dropped off to sleep.

I have just finished a Scottish folktale called Wild Robin and a beautiful poem, Close Your Eyes, by Jean Marzollo. I am presently working on the magnificent poem by Robert Frost “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” and a collection of Mother Goose rhymes If Wishes Were Horses.

I live and work in Westchester County in a small house on a lake. Around me are the woods and animals that I love to draw, including a Siberian husky named Sitka, who is a hilarious model for my dogs, and a beautiful mare called Antigone. Aside from my books, I love to be outdoors, paint, horseback ride, and spend time with good friends.

JOHNSON

An instant success, Three Jovial Huntsmen brought to its creator awards and honors that might be the envy of artists with a far longer list of works to their credit. The book was a Caldecott Honor Book in 1974, included in the American Institute of Graphic Arts’ 1974 Children’s Book Show and in the 1974 Children’s Book Showcase, and twice cited as a Brooklyn Art Book for Children. In 1975 the jury of the Biennale of Illustrations Bratislava awarded Susan Jeffers a Golden Apple for her Huntsmen illustrations. Wild Robin was one of the Horn Book’s seven best books for 1976.

SELECTED WORKS WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED: Three Jovial Huntsmen: A Mother Goose Rhyme, 1973; All the Pretty Horses, 1974; Wild Robin, 1976.

SELECTED WORKS ILLUSTRATED: Everyhow Remarkable, by Victoria Lincoln, 1967; The Buried Moon, by Joseph Jacobs, 1969; (with Rosemary Wells) The Shooting of Dan McGrew (and) The Cremation of Sam McGee, by Robert W. Service, 1969; (with Rosemary Wells) Why You Look Like You, Whereas I Tend to Look Like Me, by Charlotte Pomerantz, 1969; The Spirit of Spring, by Penelope Proddow, 1970; The First of the Penguins, by Mary O. Steele, 1973.

ABOUT: Top of the News January 1975.

JAMES WELDON JOHNSON June 17, 187l-June 26,1938

AUTHOR OF Lift Every Voice and Sing, etc.

Biographical sketch of James William Johnson, who wrote as James Weldon Johnson:

JAMES WELDON JOHNSON was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1871. His father, James Johnson, was an enterprising, self-educated man, the head waiter at the St. James Hotel in Jacksonville. Helen Louise Dillet Johnson, his mother, was a native of Nassau in the Bahamas. An intelligent woman of considerable musical talent, she was the first black woman to teach in the Florida public schools. She gave both James and his

JOHNSON, CROCKETT, pseudo (David Johnson Leisk)

Born October 6, 1906, in New York City. Childhood was spent on Long Island, New York. Attended Cooper Union, New York, and New York University.

Crockett Johnson writes that he grew up “on the south edge of Long Island Sound, where he had a small sailboat and a dog. He learned some art at New York University and Cooper Union, worked in an ice plant, and in Macy’s advertising de· partment, played professional football, art·edited several maga· zines and contributed to others; for three years drew a weekly cartoon feature known as ‘ The Little Man With the Eyes’ for Colliers, did a comic strip – ‘ Barnaby’ – that ended four years ago but which is still remembered by people round and about.” “Barnaby” is still appearing in translation in a Japanese publication and it has been adapted for a weekly dramatic half hour on radio in Japan. Crockett Johnson has written and illustrated several children’s books, including Harold and the Purple Crayon and Harold’s Fairy Tale, and he has illustrated several children’s books by other authors, including three by his wife, Ruth Krauss. He now lives in Rowayton, Connecticut, “on the north shore of Long Island Sound, where he has asmall sailboat and a dog.”

BENI MONTRESOR March 31, 1926-ILLUSTRATOR OF May I Bring a Friend? etc.

Autobiographical sketch of Beni Montresor:

“I WAS born with a pencil in my hand.” This is usually how I start to tell about my life. The place was near Verona, the town of Romeo and Juliet. I remember, around the age of three, when my grandfather would come to visit me I would say to him, “Grandpa, next time instead of candies please bring me pencils.”

In 1960-on my first visit to this countrysomeone asked me if I would like to do a children’s book. “Yes,” was my quick reply. I didn’t know exactly what a children’s book was. As a child I had never owned one. Besides, in Italy there is only one book for dillmen, Pinocchio. But …

Having had the good fortune to be born in Italy, I grew up looking at church and palace walls covered with medieval and Renaissance frescoes. They were all visual stories done for people that didn’t know how to read, telling about heroes and their adventures and saints and their miracles …. Those walls were my picture books. I spent hours and hours looking at them, living with them, intrigued by everything I saw. . . . I was caught by the magic of a three-headed dragon, a whirling heavenly body and a mysterious regal character …. I make my books thinking of those walls of my childhood.

But all the rest, what I did and what I am doing, came also from that childhood experience-when I am writing or when I am designing sets and costumes for an opera. Now, I am making my debut as a movie director. Even though it is a story set in today’s New York City I know the look the movie will have-mysterious ….

After Verona, I moved through many other places. I went to Venice, where I attended painting school and wrote plays for Italian radio. Then, to Rome, Paris, Berlin, Madrid and Africa where I worked as a set and costume designer for about thirty movies direct:ed by Rossellini, Fellini, Cermi, etc.

Finally came New York and the working on children’s books and operas began. I designed operas for the Metropolitan of New York, The Royal Opera House of London, La Scala of Milano, etc.

I have illustrated over twenty children’s books, among them my own House of Flowers, House of Stars, The Witches of Venice, Cinderella, I Saw a Ship A-Sailing and A for Angel. In 1965 I won the Caldecott Medal for the illustrations I did for Beatrice Schenk de Regniers’s May I Bring a Friend and in 1968 the Society of Illustrators Cold Medal for I Saw a Ship A-Sailing.

Often people ask me why I like New York.

“Because it is mysterious,” I answer. Today it is the only place where one can see a three-headed dragon or a whirling heavenly body … the only place in the world.

Beni Montresor studied at the Verona Art School and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. In 1950, in competition with two hundred others, he won a two-year scholarship to study design for the movies at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome. He worked on more than twenty-five important films, in association with Fellini, de Sica, Rossellini, and others. He has also designed sets and costumes for music festivals in Europe and for stage plays such as Ciraudoux’s La FaIle de Chaillot and Moravia’s Beatrice Cenci.

In the United States, Montresor designed sets and costumes for Rodgers’ Do I Hear a Waltz? on Broadway and for productions by the Metropolitan Opera Company, including Menotti’s The Last Savage, in 1964, and La Cioconda, in 1966. In 1966 also he designed and was stage director of The Magic Flute for the New York City Opera.

Beni Montresor was knighted by the Italian government in 1966 for services to the arts, and he bears the title of Cavaliere.

Montresor’s birth date has been reported as March 21 and March 30. The correct date is March 31, 1926.

SELECTED WORKS WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED:

House of Flowers, House of Stars, 1962; The Witches of Venice, 1963; Cinderella, 1965; I Saw a Ship A-Sailing, 1967; A for Angel, 1969. SELECTED WORKS ILLUSTRATED: On Christmas Eve, by Margaret Wise Brown, 1961; Belling the Tiger, by Mary Stolz, 1961; May I Bring a Friend? by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers, 1964; Willy O’Dwyer Jumped in the Fire, by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers, 1968.

ABOUT: Current Biography Yearbook 1967; Hopkins, Lee Bennett. Books Are by People; Hiirlimann, Bettina. Picture Book World. Kingman, Lee, ed. Newbery and Caldecott Medal Books; Kingman, Lee and others, comps. Illustrators of Children’s Books, 1957-1966; Who’s Who in America, 1970-71; Horn Book August 1965; Library Journal March 15, 1965; Opera News February 8, 1964; Publishers’ Weekly March 8, 1965; School Library Journal March 1965; Show March 1962; This Week March 3, 1968.

EVALINE NESS April 24, 1911-

AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR OF Sam, Bangs & Moonshine, etc.

Autobiographical sketch of Evaline Ness:

AS an author and illustrator, I was lateblooming. But a critic I was, from the beginning.

As soon as I was able to read and write, I copied down my favorite stories on the hundred-yard rolls of white paper that backs ribbons. (My grown-up sister was a milliner.) And with that same critical industry, I searched through magazines to find appropriate pictures to illustrate stories which another creative sister turned out daily. (She was twelve; I was seven.) It never occurred to me to compete with ready-made words and pictures. Anyway, I was too busy sewing clothes for my family of dolls, of which the smallest measured two inches.

It wasn’t until my first year at Ball State Teachers College in Muncie, Indiana, that my muse appeared in the form of an elderly gentle alcoholic man who had slipped from being a top illustrator in Chicago to retouching photographs. He told me a story more stimulating than any I had ever read. He told me about a woman he knew who illustrated shoes and was paid five dollars per drawing. In 1930 that was, to me, unheard-of wealth! My anxiety about my future was over! All I had to do was to enroll in the Chicago Art Institute, study art and come out a shoe artist. And so I did, and I didn’t.

I enrolled and I studied art, but not knowing the difference between commercial art and fine art, I found myself in the fine arts

department and was never, never taught how to draw shoes.

But I did draw and paint everything else: fashions for Saks Fifth Avenue, illustrations for Ladies’ Home] DUmal, Good H DUsekeeping, Seventeen, Sports Illustrated and, as the raconteur always says, “a host of others.”

It was Mary Cosgrave, children’s book editor for Houghton Mifflin & Co. in 1957, who started my book-illustration career. She gave me the manuscript of The Bridge by Charlton Ogburn, Jr. and I closed myself up or in or whatever an artist has to do, to illustrate it and discovered that I had never been happier. I was seven years old again “finding” appropriate pictures to correlate magic words, but this time I had no need for magazines.

After The Bridge, I stopped other kinds of illustrating altogether and concentrated on books. About fifteen books later, I was runner-up for the Caldecott Award for three consecutive years for All in the Morning Early by Sorche Nic Leodhas, Pocketful of Cricket by Rebecca Caudill, and Tom Tit

To (no author). The fourth year (1967) I actually got the medal for Sam, Bangs & Moonshine. It was all mine! I had written the story too. It was the fifth book that I had written as well as illustrated. The first four were josefina February, Sula Sula, Exactly Alike, and A Double Discovery.

I am still surprised and very pleased when someone calls me an author. I like to think I owe it all to ribbon paper.

Evaline (Michelow) Ness was born in Union City, Ohio. In addition to Ball State Teachers College and the Art Institute of Chicago, she has studied at the Corcoran Gallery Art School, Washington, D.C., the Art Students League, . New York, and the Academia de Belles Artes, in Rome. josefina February, the first book she both wrote and illustrated, grew out of a year’s stay in Haiti. It was selected as a Notable Book by the American Library Association and an Honor Book by the New York Herald Tribune. Several of her books have been cited as among the best illustrated of the year by the New York Times Book Review Children’s Books section, and a number have been included in exhibitions of the American Institute of Graphic Arts. She married Elliot Ness in 1938 (deceased), and Arnold A. Bayard in59.

SELECTED WORKS WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED:

Josefina February, 1963; A Gift for Sula Sula, 1963; Exactly Alike, 1964; A Double Discovery, 1965; Sam, Bangs & Moonshine, 1966; The Girl and the Goatherd, 1970.

SELECTED WORKS ILLUSTRATED: The Bridge, by Charlton Ogburn, Jr., 1957; All in the Morning Early, by Sorche Nic Leodhas, 1963; A Pocketful of Cricket, by Rebecca Caudill, 1964; Tom Tit Tot, 1965; The ‘Truthful Harp, by Lloyd Alexander, 1967.

ABOUT: Contemporary Authors, Vol. 7-8; Hopkins, Lee Bennett. Books Are by People; Kingman, Lee and others, comps. Illustrators of Children’s Books: 1957-66; Something About the Author, Vol. 1; Who’s Who in America, 1970-71; Who’s Who of American Women, 1970-1971; American Artist January 1956; August 1967; Horn Book October 1964; August 1967; Library Journal March 15, 1964; School Library Journal March 1967; Top of the News April 1967.

Alice Provensen

Born August 14, 1918. Childhood was spent in Chicago. Attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; University of California at Los Angeles; and Art Students League,New York.

Alice Provensen is the wife of Martin Provensen, also an artist and illustrator. As children both Alice and Martin loved books and the illustrations of Rackham, Dulac, Pyle and the other great illustrators of children’s books. Although they both lived in Chicago and attended the same art schools and the University of California, they did not meet until they were quite grown. The ambition of both was to make. beautiful books themselves, so when they met it was very natural that they should pool their talents. Their home is on a farm near Staatsburg, New York, in Dutchess County; surrounded by their favorite models: geese, goats, cats, chickens, ducks, sheep and lambs.

PROVENSEN, MARTIN

Born July 10, 1916. Childhood was spent in Chicago. Attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; University of California at Los Angeles.

Martin Provensen is married to Alice Provensen who collaborates with him on children’s book illustrations. Their friend Gustav Tenngren introduced them to a New York publisher, and this contact resulted in their first book, The Fireside Book of Folk Songs, which was followed by many others. They wrote as well as illustrated The Animal Fair. Their illustrations have been exhibited and have received a number of awards. Mr. and Mrs. Provensen believe that in working together they are following a “tradition.” “Illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages were usually done by a company of Clerks, Scribes, and Scriveners, who passed the same page back and forth for additions and corrections till it met with the approval of all, and we try to do the same. And even the great artists Braque and Picasso painted together on the same picture.”

ALICE PROVEN SEN August 14, 1918- and MARTIN PROVENSEN July 10, 1916-

ILLUSTRATORS OF The Charge of the Light Brigade, etc.

Biographical sketch of Alice and Martin Provensen:

THE lives of Alice and Martin Provensen ahnost touched at many points before they finally met. Both were born in Chicago and grew up loving books and book illustration. Each decided at an early age to make beautiful books. They both won scholarships to the Art Institute of Chicago. Later they both transferred to the University of California and spent a year there, Alice in Los Angeles and Martin in Berkeley. Alice went to New York and studied for a while at the Art Students League. Returning to California, she began to work for Walter Lantz Studios. Martin worked for five years for Walt Disney on such films as Fantasia and Dumbo. During his three and a half years in the Navy he worked on training movies. While working on a film for the Navy on the Universal lot with Lantz he and Alice discovered each other. They were married in Washington, D.C., in 1944.

MARTIN PROVENSEN

In 1945 the Provensens moved to New York and began to illustrate children’s books together. Their first book was The Fireside Book of Folk Songs, with five hundred illustrations. Following it were The Fireside Cookbook, The Golden Mother Goose, and then Animal Fair, which they wrote as well as illustrated.

Mter traveling throughout Europe in 1950 collecting material for illustrations, they returned to the United States, bought a farm near Staatsburg, New York, and converted the bam into a studio. In 1952 they illustrated The Golden Bible: The New Testament, taking their models from color photographs of the Holy Land and from illuminated manuscripts. Many books followed, including their own favorite, The Iliad and the Odyssey. For this they traveled to Greece for three months in 1954, filling sketchbook after sketchbook with what the eye could see and the camera could not.

Karen’s Opposites, published in 1963, was both written and illustrated by them. Their own daughter Karen, then four years old, is the Karen of the story about two little girls, one dark and one light, one shouting and one whispering, doing exactly opposite things. The book won honorable mention in the New York Herald Tribune Children’s Spring Book Festival.

The Provensens work together on all their illustrations, much as the medieval scribes and scriveners did, passing the drawings back and forth between them, adding this and taking out that, until each is satisfied. They discard sketch after sketch, until they finally obtain the effect they feel will most delight the young eye. They completed a set of illustrations for The Charge of the Light Brigade and then, unhappy with its complexity, redid the whole book. This stem selfcriticism results in a deceptively easy, spontaneous-looking style that has spawned a host of imitators in art school circles. Their work has received many awards, including honors from the American Institute of Graphic Arts and the Society of Illustrators. They won a National Offset Lithography Competition prize and their books have appeared frequently on the New York Times lists of best-illustrated books.

The farm supplies many models for their work: cows, cats, horses, lambs. Their daughter, who shares their art enthusiasm, contributes her criticism to their work and her drawings hang in the Provensen studio among those of her parents.

“Our profession is drawing and painting,” say the Provensens. “Our hobbies are drawing and painting. Our enthusiasms are drawing and painting. Outside of that, our interests are doing it better.”

SELECTED WORKS ILLUSTRATED: The Fireside Book of Folk Songs, by Margaret Bradford Boni, 1947; The Golden Mother Goose, 1948; The Golden Bible for Children: New Testament,

1953; The Golden Treasury of Myths and Legends, by Ann Terry White, 1959; Ten Great Plays, by William Shakespeare, 1962; The Charge of the Light Brigade, by Alfred Tennyson, 1964; Aesop’s Fables, 1965; Tales from the Ballet, by Louis Untermeyer, 1968; The Golden Book of Fun and Nonsense, by Louis Untermeyer, 1970.

SELECTED WORKS \VRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED:

Animal Fair, 1952; Karen’s Curiosity, 1963; Karen’s Opposites, 1963; What Is a Color? 1967; Who’s in the Egg? 1970.

ABOUT: Hiirlimann, Bettina. Picture Book World; Kingman, Lee and others, comps. Illustrators of Children’s Books: 1957-1966; Viguers, Ruth Hill and others, comps. Illustrators of Children’s Books: 1946-1956; Who’s Who in Graphic Alt, 1962; American Artist December 1959; Famous Artists ~Iagazine, 1961; Publishers’ Weekly July 13, 1964.

ABOUT ALICE PROVENSEN: Who’s Who of American Women, 1970-71.

CHRIS RASCHKA

March 6, 1959-

AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR OF Yo! Yes?, etc. Autobiographical sketch of Christopher Raschka:

WHA T I’D LIKE to tell you about is my growing-up years, from when I was very small, from the time before I could read, up to when I left my home to go away to college. I have parents who come from two different countries. My father grew up in the United States and my mother grew up in Austria, which is a country in Europe. Because of this I grew up some in both places, in my mother’s country and in my father’s country. My parents met each other in a refugee camp after World War II, where they were both working to help find new homes for people whose old homes had been blown up by a bomb or burned in the fighting. This was in Austria. This was where my brother was born, too. After a few years my mother, father and brother moved, first to Philadelphia and then to Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, which is where I was born, on March 6, 1959. Huntingdon is a little town in the Appalachian Mountains where there is a small college, where my father was a teacher, but the biggest thing is the prison, which looks like a wide castle. All of this is from before I can remember, I only know about it because of things my parents have told me.

My family went back to Europe, this time to Germany. We didn’t fly in an airplane, we traveled all the way across the Atlantic Ocean in an enormous boat, an ocean liner. This boat was so big that even though we lived on it for ten days, and my brother and I explored it every day, we never even saw all of the rooms. There were swimming pools. There was a movie theater, which my brother and I snuck into sometimes at night when my mother thought we were sleeping. On the last day of the trip, my parents, my brother and I walked from our cabin, which was way down deep in the ship, up many

Rascka: RAH sh kah CHRIS RASCHKA

ghts of stairs all the way to the bridge, here the captain and ship’s pilots stand. ‘hile we were there the terrible, loud fog)rn blew, right in our ears, even though it as a sunny day. Suddenly one of the ship’s fficers came running at us, wagging his mger at me, telling me not to do that! It ,as 1 who had blown the foghorn, with the lttle white switch I was flipping back and orth. I did something wrong without evenmowing it.

That was when I was five. When we lived

In Germany then, my sister was born. That year I went to school for the first time. I liked school, though sometimes it made me nervous, and there was a certain big girl who used to try to catch me on my way home, and if she did, she would slap me.

When we lived in the United States again, we lived in Chicago. While we lived in Germany I forgot how to speak English, but I remembered when I was with American friends a~ain. My first teacher here would say, “Do you understand, Christopher?” I did. I had one teacher in that school whom I didn’t like. My friend, Bryan, and I had long hair, which was kind of new and kind of cool then, but because we did, and because we were boys, the

teacher made everyone III l1110 “‘~vv —- -Betty and Crissy until we got our hair cut. She also sent us to the principal. But we never did cut our hair.

My family lived in Germany again and the rest of the time in Chicago. I didn’t get any more brothers or sisters. But we had two different dogs. Now I live in New York City with my wife, whose name is Lydie (Lie-dee), our baby boy Ingo, two cats and one turtle.

Chris Raschka received a B.A. degree from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, in 1981. He was an art teacher in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, from 1985 to 1986. He lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for two years, working as an illustrator and freelance artist, before coming to New York City. A viola player, he has been a member of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra and the Flint, Michigan, Symphony Orchestra. He had a one-person show at the Wittgensteiner Heimathaus in Bad Berleburg, Germany, in 1995. He is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, the Authors Guild, and PEN In-ternational.

Yo! Yes? was named an Honor Book in

the 1994 Randolph Caldecott Medal Awards given by the American Library Association. It was the 1993 winner of the UNICEF-Ezra Jack Keats National Award for Children’s Book Illustration. Its illustrations were included in a show of Caldecott Medal winners and Honor Books at the Chicago Art Institute. Charlie Parker Played Be Bop was included in the 1993 Bologna Book Fair Exhibition of children’s books and was named an ALA Notable Book of the Year. Both Charlie Parker and Yo! Yes? are included in the VI Premi Internacional Catalonia D’lllustracio. Elizabeth Imagine( an Iceberg was included in the 1995 Bolo gna Book Fair Exhibition.

SELECTED WORKS: Rand R: A Story of Two Alph~ bets, 1990; Charlie Parker Played Be Bop, 1992; y, Yes?, 1993; Elizabeth Imagined an Iceberg, 199· Blushful Hippopotamus, 1995; Can’t Sleep, 1995.

H. A. Rey

September 16, 1898-

AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR OF CII”;OIlJ George T”ke.r (I joh, Ceclly G. “lid tbe 9 MOllkey.r, Elc.

Autobiographical sketch of Hans August.

Rey:

BORN: September 16, 1898, in Ham burg, Germany; third of four children Early AClivilies, 1898 10 1900: Eating, drinking, sleeping, learning to talk and walk. In between, doodling with crayons. 1900, December: First recognizable drawing: man on horseback. Both man and horse had distinctly human faces.

Childhood: Drawing most of the time.

Since I lived near a zoo I SOon was more familiar with elephants and kangaroos than iVith cows or sheep. I am still fond of aninals and often go to the zoo. Sometimes I Iream of having a small zoo of my own, omewhere in the countryside.

School Yea/”J: Drawing most of the time, 1 and out of schoo!. During lessons I hid ~etchbooks in Latin or Greek grammars. thought I fooled my teachers but they Iter told me they had always noticed, just ·t me go on doing it.

1910: World War I was going full blast, I after leaving school I was right away ‘afted into the army. But I did better with y pencil than with my rifle.

POJ/U’tlr Years: Contrasted sharply with ppy times of my youth. Inflation, no )ney, and no chance of going to an art lOa!. I eked out a living by designing d lithographing posters for a circus. The t of the time I spent with assorted studies

Hamburg University: philosophy, an atIY, natural sciences, languages.

1924: Matters having gone from bad to rse I accepted a job offered me by rela~s in Brazil in their import firm. Thus I nd myself composing commercial letters hich I was not allowed to adorn with ilrations) and selling bathtubs up and In the Amazon River. Obviously it was

the right road but it took me twelve ‘s to find that out.

935: Turning point: a girl from my ‘e town, disliking things in Nazi Gery, showed up under Rio de Janeiro’s 1 trees. Before three months had passed IS not only married to her but had said good-by to commerce. Together, Margret arId I (she is an artist too) embarked on an artistic career: magazine work, advertising, book illustrations.

1936: Belated honeymoon trip, to Europe. A visit to Paris, planned to last four weeks, lasted four years. Here I did my first picture books for children, and much to my surprise I was not shown the door when I submitted them to publishers. Half a dozen childrens’ books, published in France and England, were the crop of that period.

1940, Jflne: Thirty-six hours before the Nazi armies entered, we fled from Paris on bicycles, taking along only a few victuals and some of my manuscripts. After four days of cycling we caught a southbound train and eventually reached Lisbon. From there we went to Rio, and from there to New York.

On October 14, 1940, the Statue of Liberty greeted us through the morning mist. We were prepared for a difficult start but fate was kind: within a month, four of the manuscripts we had brought along were accepted for publication. The autumn sky looked twice as blue to us the day we got this news.

Stt:Jce then some twenty picture books of ours have been published in this country, and more are to come, I hope. I say “ours” because even those that do not show Margret’s name on the title owe much to her

help: she usually does the text and criticizes my drawings while they are in progress.

Ever since we came here we have been living in Greenwich Village. We are three:

Margret, myself, and Charcoal-our black cocker spaniel. In 1946 Margret and I became American citizens.

Concluding, may I say that making picture books for children is the most wonderful profession I can think of? Not only do you have fun doing it but your fellowmen even pay you for it. Try it some day!

ROJANKOVSKY, FEODOR STEPANOVICH ..

Born December 21, 1891, in Mitava, Russia. Childhood was spent in Reval (now Tallinn) and St. Petersburg (now Leningrad). Attended Reval High School and Academy ot Fine Arts, Moscow.

“Two great events determined the course of my childhood,” says Feodor Rojankovsky. “I was taken to the zoo and saw the most marvelous creatures on earth … and while my admiration was running high, I was given a set of crayons. My father was a school director, my two elder brothers had a talent for paint. ing, and my love for art was born in our family. After the death of my father, when I was five, the family passed through hard times but we never parted from Father’s valuable Library, until a revolution destroyed it. There were big books in this library and I sat for hours admiring them. I remember so vividly Milton’s Paradise Lost and Don Quixote and the Bible with the magnificent illustrations by Dare. The whole environ. ment in which I was brought up pushed me toward artistic expression. I was eight or nine when I started, together with my sister, to draw illustrations for Robinson Crusoe, one of my favorite books …. Later, when I went to school in Reval Tallinn … my love for art was enhanced and strengthened by a passion for nature … all these early contacts with nature played a decisive role in my development as an artist. In 191Z I entered the Moscow Fine Arts Academy but two years later I was serving as an officer in the 1914-17 campaign. My regiment traveled through Poland, Prussia, Austria and Rumania. My war sketches were reproduced by art magazines. During the Revolution I started to make children’s book illustrations for the young Ukrainian Republic. In 1919 I was mobilized by the ‘Volunteer Army’ (White Army), and soon my military career was finished behind barbed wire in Poland. Since then I have seen many countries and had many occupations.” In Paris Mr. Rojankovsky did work for several publishers, but his first children’s book to be published there (and also in America) was Daniel Boone, Domino Press, 1931. Illustrations for many children’s books followed, including several by Esther Averill, and a series devised by Pere Castor to be printed in quantity and sold cheaply. In 1941, after the German occupation of Paris, Mr. Rojankovsky came to the United States. His TaIl Book of Mother Goose appeared the next year, and from then on there were many other books. In 1956 his illustrations for John Langstaff’s Frog Went A-Courtin’ received the Cal decott Medal. Mr. Rojankovsky has also received the Art Directors Club Gold Medal for color illustration in advertising, and, in 1953, the Silver Medal of the Silver Jubilee of the Limited Editions Club. Mr. Rojankovsky’s wife is also Russian born. They have a daughter, Tanya, born in 1948, and their home is in Bronxville, New York. Some of this material was obtained from the Horn Book, August, 1956.

Feodor Rojankovsky

1891- IllUSTRATOR

Autobiographical sketch of Feodor Rojankovsky:

I AM born in Russia on the shore of the

Baltic Sea, from the wonderful parents (sometime I will tell about them). Dad was the headmaster of the Mitava High School. We were three brothers and two sisters. Two elder brothers were my first art teachers. Imitating them, with my best friend, my little sister Tania, we made my first illustrated book (never printed)”Robinson Crusoe.” I was nine years old by that time. Later in our school magazine I was the most outstanding illustrator. I believe my reputation was a little exaggerated.

I never liked our drawing lessons nor my art teacher in school. He made us copy boring plaster ornaments. But we had another teacher, one of natural history. He often took us hiking in parks, forests, and on the seashore. He taught us to observe. and to love Nature. In written reports we had to give account on our observations. Mine were always illustrated-I could not do otherwise, and this put my teacher in ecstasy.

My serious studies in art started when in 1912 I became student at the Moscow Fine Arts Academy_ What a wonderful school it was, what a wonderful city! Such theaters, circus, and all that.

In 1914 the First World War broke out.

I was drafted in the army, being infantry reserve officer. My first published drawings and pictures appeared in art magazines when I was wounded and evacuated to the rear.

In 1920 after the revolution I found myself abroad first in Poland, where I worked as stage decorator, art director of a fashion magazine, and finally art director of a big book publishing house in Posnan.

From Poland I moved to Paris. I had at first hard times in this beautiful city, where I lived and worked for fourteen years. When the second war came and the Germans invaded France, I had to leave Paris, my house, and all my books. Before this sad event I worked there for myself, for an advertising agency, moving pictures, and finally as book illustrator for adult and junior people.

Feodor Rojankovsky: FJ7.J7. all dawy rah jatl KOFF slu’r In 1941 in Seville a small cargo N al’emar was brought with 1400 refugees from Europe repeating the experience of Christopher Columbus, and disembarked on September twelfth in New York Harbor.

In my dreams America was far from what it is in reality. I loved in my school times Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain, Edgar Poe. I loved buffaloes and Redskins.

Here I am working exclusively as book illustrator for young readers. As soon as my work allows me I try to escape from New York on the search for the America of my dreams. I find only its fragments. But I try also to understand the other, the new America for whose sons and daughters I make my books.

Pardon me for closing the page by a quotation. The Russian poet Mayakovsky concludes his poem on Christopher Columbus by these lines which I shall like to repeat on my own part:

But I would close America, clean it a bit and then

Richard SCARRY June 5, 1919-

UTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR OF Richard Scarry’s Great Big Schoolhouse, etc.

utobiographical sketch of Richard McClure Scarry:

BORN in Boston, Massachusetts.Went to school but didn’t learn much. No college would have me. Went to Boston Museum School of Fine Arts instead.

World War II came along and they needed me. I had a bit of a problem getting in. Because I wore glasses they wouldn’t accept me as a volunteer but preferred to draft me instead.They thought that I would make a good radio repair man. My exam mark was minus thirteen so they decided to make me a corporal. An ex-bunk mate turned officer told me that I should become an officer and then I would have someone shine my shoes every night.I applied for Officer Candidate School before a board of officers. The interview consisted of one question. “How many men in the waiting room outside?” I replied, “Ten, sir. Two sergeants, three corporals and five privates.” I was right so they accepted me.

Shortly after graduation I was sent to be art director for the Troop Information Section Headquarters of North African Theater of Operations where I learned how to tell the troops what the war was all about. Moved on to Italy and eventually Paris.

Returned to the United States and moved to New York with the i<lell ()f becoming some sort of artist. Did a bit of magazine work and about 1946 did my first book for Golden Press. For a number of years I illustrated stories written by others. Then I had an idea for a book of my own. Golden Press liked it and the result was, Richard Scarry’s Best Word Book Ever. I married Patricia Murphy in 1949. She was born in Vancouver, British Columbia. She writes children’s books too, but she can’t draw. We have a sixteen-year-old son, Huck, who draws all the time. We have lived in New York, Ridgefield and Westport, Connecticut, but have recently moved to Lausanne, Switzerland. We’re living down by the Lake of Geneva and I commute to my studio in the center of the old town by the shortest subway in the world.When I’m not working, which is almost always, I am in the mountains, an hour or so away. In the winter I ski. In the summer I hike. I am a very slow skiier but a very fast hiker.Richard Scarry served in the United States Army, 1941-1946, and became a captain. With his son, Richard McClure II (Huck), and his wife Patricia, he moved to Switzerland in 1968.Scarry has illustrated more than eighty books since 1947, estimating that their total sales in the United States alone had reached twenty-five million by 1969. ELECTED WORKS WRITIEN AND ILLUSTRATED:Tnker and Tanker, 1960; The Rooster Struts,1963; Busy, Busy World, 1965; Is This the House of Mistress Mouse? 1966; Richard Scarry’s Storybook Dictionary, 1966; What Do People Do All Day? 1968; Richard Scarry’s Great Big Air Book, 1971.SELECTED WORKS ILLUSTRATED: Let’s Go Fishing, by Kathryn Jackson, 1949; The Animals’ Merry Chistmas, by Kathryn Jackson, 1950; Little Indian, by Margaret Wise Brown, 1954; Pierre Bear, by Patricia Scarry, 1954; Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, by Barbara Shook Hazen, 1964.ABOUT: Contemporary Authors, Vol. 19-20; Kingman, Lee and others, comps. Illustrators of Children’s Books: 1957-1966; Publishers’ Weekly October 20, 1969.