Featured Author

Born August 30, 1909 in Newton Centre, Massachusetts
Died October 15, 1968 in Massachusetts

The story of Virginia Lee Burton is in some ways a very ordinary one, but the more you contemplate it the more startling it becomes. She is remarkable both for what she did do and what she didn’t do. She only wrote seven books, but six of those seven have been in print almost continuously since they were written sixty odd years ago. More than that, her writing and illustration was only a part of her career, primarily of interest to her while her two boys were young. Once they grew up, she moved on to other creative pursuits and left book writing and illustrating behind.

Virginia Lee Burton was born in Newton Centre, Massachusetts on August 30, 1909. She was born into a well established family, her father being the Dean of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She lived in Massachusetts for the first seven years of her life before moving with her family to California. She studied art and dance at the California School of Fine Arts.

When she was 19, she and her father returned to Boston. She was scheduled to begin a tour with a ballet company when her father broke his leg and she withdrew from the tour in order to care for him during his recovery. She returned to art school where she met and then married her art teacher, George Demetrios, a classical sculptor, in 1931.

While still pursuing her studies, she obtained a position as a sketcher of dances at the Boston Transcript. She and George moved from Boston to Folly Cove, Massachusetts in 1932 after the birth of their first child, Aristides. Her second son, Michael, was born in 1935.

When you look at her seven books, the interesting thing is how recognizable they are from one to the other and, yet, how they do not run together. In one’s memory there is something distinctly different in each one that sets it apart. Four of her seven books are about heavy machinery (Train, Steam Shovel, Cable Car and Snow Plow) and another one is an inanimate structure, a house. Most of her books make distinctive use of color but a couple of them are primarily in black and white. Probably the characteristic that ties them together is her use of line for motion and energy. I suppose it was that interest in dance and the years of dance sketching that gives her pictures, with their loops and swirls, such energy.

Another interesting thing about Burton that I have noticed over the years is that it is common for a friend to own one of Burton’s books that their children have loved but to be unaware of the others. Presumably this is a function of the fact that the books are all so distinctive.

Burton’s approach to writing her stories was to sketch out the story first. Once she felt she had the visual narrative in place she would then review that with her sons and their friends, telling the story to go with the pictures. Once she had done this a number of times, marking their responses to variations in the narration, she would then sit down and actually write the story. The writing of the story was, to her, the most difficult and unnatural part of the process, a perception on her part which most readers would not infer from reading her books, as the telling of the tale flows smoothly with natural rhythms and cadences.

The final thing that is reasonably common across all her work is her attention to detail. Her illustrations are not an attempt at realism but there are always details buried somewhere in the pictures that either add to the story or which are just plain interesting and likely to hold the attention of a little one.

Burton’s first book, Choo Choo, was published in 1935 for her four year old son Aris. Choo Choo is the story of a runaway train engine rendered in charcoal sketches. It is a good story (especially to any youngsters attracted to trains, big equipment or things that go fast), though in my opinion the least artful of her seven books.

Her second book and probably her most famous and popular, was published in 1939. Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel was written for her second son, Michael. This is the book that really made her name and is most loved. A later story, The Little House, was even more positively received by the critical establishment. While very popular, it can’t supplant Mike Mulligan.

Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel tells the tale of a fellow and his steam shovel who have been overtaken by technological progress. More powerful and reliable excavators are putting them out of work. In a desperate bid to stay competitive, Mike offers a town that is seeking to have the cellar dug for their new town hall, to complete the job in a single day or there will be no cost. The twist at the end is that, in his focused effort to complete the cellar before sun-down, which he does, he forgets to leave a way to get his steam shovel Mary Anne, out.

In an afterward, Burton indicated that when she sketched out the story, she got to this point and did not have a good ending in place. Showing it to one of her young neighbors, Dick Berkenbush he suggested the resolution of the entrapped Mary Anne which has ever since given the ending the twist that has entertained both parents and children. The Boston Globe had an article a couple of years ago relating Berkenbush’s recollection of this event.

Part of what gives Mike Mulligan its enduring appeal is that it embodies that quintessential American dilemma, a love of the new in tension with a respect for the past and a regret to see the familiar pass away; or, in this case, pass into the cellar.

Mike Mulligan was followed a couple of years later with Calico, The Wonder Horse or the Saga of Stewy Stinker. Calico was Burton’s answer to her displeasure with the artistic quality of cartoons and their narrative blandness. An adventure story for young ones, Burton recounts how Hank and his horse Calico forestall bandits from ruining a Christmas party. Done in black and white, Burton reworked the illustrations many times before she was satisfied that she had captured the spirit of a cartoon but with the detail and graphic style that would not only hold the interest of a child but be worthwhile on their own.

The Little House tells the story of a little house in the country which, with the sprawl of a nearby city, becomes encompassed by urban life till rescued and moved back out into the country by a descendant of the original builder. Again there is the theme of rescuing our idealized past from the march of progress. The artwork in The Little House is wonderful. It is a great story to build a child’s awareness of time, progress, and seasons. The Little House was the winner of the 1943 Caldecott Medal.

Katy and the Big Snow and Maybelle the Cable Car brought Burton back to her core material, animated big machines that are endlessly fascinating to small boys. The detail is especially rich in Katy and the Big Snow and Maybelle the Cable Car has a neat parallel theme of popular civic action which you would be hard pressed to find in other stories for audiences of this young age.

At this point, Burton’s children were in their teens and she moved on to other artistic pursuits. She published only one further book, Life Story, The Story of Life on Our Earth from its Beginning to Now in 1962. One of Burton’s characteristic techniques is to ground her stories with the specific and the local. She starts Life Story in the Paleozoic period and ends the story of the evolution of life at her home and garden in Folly Cove.

Burton also illustrated six books by others. Most notable would be her illustration of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes. Perhaps most intriguing would be her illustration of Anne Malcolmson’s Song of Robin Hood. Malcolmson and Grace Castagnetta set fifteen old ballads of Robin Hood to music and Burton spent three years producing meticulously detailed drawings to illustrate the ballads and music. The result is a beautiful book well suited to children with a love of language, ballads, music, or Robin Hood. It can be a great read-to for those children with a good ear and the attention span. The language in the ballads can be a little archaic but not dauntingly so. From the ballad Robin Hood and the Tanner:

“What tradesman art thou?” said jolly Robin,
“Good fellow, I prithee me show;
And also me tell in what place thou dost dwell,
For both these fain would I know.”

“I am a tanner,” bold Arthur replied,
“In Nottingham long have I wrought.
And if thou’lt come there, I vow and I swear
“I’ll tan thy hide for naught.”

In 1941 Burton co-founded a design group, The Folly Cove Designers, which was essentially an art co-op where everyone participated in making singular textile designs, all submissions being reviewed by the group. As she began spending less time on children’s books she focused more and more on the Folly Cove Designers and in particular, articulating a theory of illustration and design, a project which she was still working on at the time of her death from cancer in 1968.

In Burton’s work we find attention to detail, locality, and story-telling style that capture small children’s interest. I suppose it took a perfectionist (she was reputed to throw away many works that her editors thought were perfectly fine end products, so that she could reach a greater level of refinement) with the skills of an artist and the passion of dancer and the sense of the stage to accomplish such an enduring repertoire.

Picture Books

Choo Choo: The Story of a Little Engine Who Ran Away by Virginia Lee Burton Suggested 1935

Sad-faced Boy by Arna Bontemps and illustrated by Virginia Lee Burton 1937

Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton Highly Recommended 1939

Manual of American Mountaineering by Kenneth A. Henderson and illustrated by Virginia Lee Burton 1941

Calico, the Wonder Horse by Virginia Lee Burton Suggested 1941

Fast Sooner Hound by Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy and illustrated by Virginia Lee Burton 1942

Don Coyote by Leigh Park and illustrated by Virginia Lee Burton 1942

The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton Highly Recommended 1942

Katy and the Big Show by Virginia Lee Burton Highly Recommended 1943

Song of Robin Hood by Virginia Lee Burton Suggested 1947

The Emperor's New Clothes by Virginia Lee Burton Suggested 1949

Maybelle, the Cable Car by Virginia Lee Burton Recommended 1952

Life Story: The Story of Life on Our Earth from Its Beginning up to Now by Virginia Lee Burton Suggested 1962

Born September 30, 1916 in Passaic, New Jersey
Died July 24, 2000 in Burlington, Vermont

Alvin Tresselt’s life and work was a living embodiment of the land of second chances. Born in 1916 in Passaic, New Jersey, he became a leader in a particular style of children’s writing as well as sustaining a career as an editor and publisher.

Growing up in New Jersey at a time when the basis of the state motto, “The Garden State” was more obvious, he spent a number of summers on a farm as a child. His love of the land led to daydreaming about becoming a farmer with a herd of cattle.

However, graduating high-school in 1934 in the midst of the Great Depression, opportunities were constrained. He headed across the river to New York, working a variety of jobs up to the beginning of World War II. He was rejected for military service for health reasons and,, instead spent the war years working in defense plants.

It was really only in 1946, twelve years after finishing school, that his career began to take a discernable direction. The first event of the year was his landing a job at one of the old New York department store icons, B. Altman & Co., working on interior displays.

Also in 1946, Tresselt wrote his first children’s book, Rain Drop Splash, illustrated by Leonard Weisgard. Tresselt was familiar with the work of Margaret Wise Brown and Leonard Weisgard and the whole Bank Street College movement. There was a new effort from these folks to create children’s stories that were not the traditional morality tale but rather stories that seized on and amplified some aspect of a child’s world and related it in a fashion comprehensible to a young child.

This style of writing, frequently referred to as “mood” writing, exults in the rhythm and cadences of language. The stories are often not even stories as traditionally understood. Sometimes there is no protagonist as the focus of the story. Frequently there is little narrative structure or even directionality to the story. They often are more characterized by a cycle of sound and rhythm than by having a beginning, middle and end. In most instances, it is expository writing without a narrative structure.

If this sounds like academic gibberish, it often is in the hands of lesser talents. However, with a Margaret Wise Brown or an Alvin Tresselt, it can produce something more akin to an extended westernized haiku; a little mysterious and out of the ordinary but soothing and relaxing. These are often wonderfully calming stories, excellent for bedtime or calming an overly excited child.

The forward to Tresselt’s Caldecott Medal winner, White Snow, Bright Snow, gives you a sense of the melody of his writing. The prologue is in verse form but the main text is in prose though it nudges into poetry territory every now and then.

Softly, gently in the secret night, Down from the North came the quiet white. Drifting, sifting, silent flight, Softly, gently in the secret night.

White snow, bright snow, smooth and deep.
Light snow, night snow, quiet as sleep.
Down, down, without a sound;
Down, down to the frozen ground.

Covering roads and hiding fences,
Sifting in cracks and filling up trenches.
Millions of snowflakes, tiny and light,
Softly, gently, in the secret night.

You can get a sense of his prose style from this excerpt from How Far is Far?

“How far is far?” asked the little boy.

“As far as the end of your nose,” said his mother, and she kissed the end of his nose.

“As far as you can walk until you get tired. As far away as the other side of the world. Even as far away as the first star that shines when the sky grows dark.”

“That’s a lot to think about,” said the little boy, and he went out to dig a hole.

In the case of Tresselt, this sense of mood is supplemented with a dose of information – it isn’t all fluff. While Tresselt was inspired by the work of Brown and Weisgard, he drew upon his own experiences and enthusiasms to inform his stories. In the case of Rain Drop Splash and for many of the books that were to follow, this meant writing stories related to nature, the cycle of life and ecology. In his first book, Tresselt follows a single rain drop from a mud puddle through the water cycle, ultimately to the ocean.

As an aside, it is interesting to note just how many ecology/conservation stories were being produced in these years, not as a movement, and not even as message books. In fact, that is part of what makes them so wonderful. You are not clunkingly hit over the head with a “Nature is Good” message, but rather, you enjoy a story in which that is the inescapable conclusion without it ever being presented as such. Just in this period, way before Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring for adults, you have Janice May Udry with A Tree is Nice, Bill Peet with Farewell to Shady Glade, Virginia Lee Burton with The Little House and I am sure there are others. I wonder how many conservationists of the sixties were inspired by exposure to these tales.

Following the popular and critical reception of Rain Drop Splash, Tresselt worked with Roger Duvoisin to produce White Snow, Bright Snow in 1947 winning that year’s Caldecott Medal for the illustrations. This was the beginning of a long and fruitful collaboration with Duvoisin. Of the fifty-three books Tresselt wrote over his lifetime, Duvoisin illustrated eighteen of them.

With his critical and popular reputation founded on these two books, Tresselt continued writing primarily nature based “mood” books over the next fifteen years including Sun Up, Follow the Wind, Autumn Harvest and Wake Up, Farm!

As trend-setting as his books were, they became widely, and often less adeptly, emulated. One consequence was that by the sixties, some began to comment on a surfeit of these type of books and to criticize his continuing focus on nature and “mood” books. In 1964, Tresselt began a second chapter of his writing with a long series of retellings of folktales, primarily stories from Japan. However the first in this sequence, and ever since one of the most popular, was the retelling of an old Ukrainian folktale, The Mitten recounting the adventures and misadventures of an increasing crowd of forest animals seeking refuge from the winter cold in the ever expanding mitten dropped by one small boy. This folktale has proven to be enduringly popular in the US with numerous subsequent author/illustrators trying their hand at the retelling; most recently Jan Brett’s beautifully illustrated version.

All during the period that he was writing children’s stories, Tresselt also held a regular job, first at B. Altman, ultimately moving into their in-house advertising, and then leaving B. Altman and moving into publishing. In 1952 he became the managing editor of the Parent’s Institute’s children’s magazine, Humpty Dumpty. In 1965 he became the editor and then executive editor of Parent’s Magazine Press. After leaving the Press in 1974 he became dean of faculty at the Institute of Children’s Literature in Redding Ridge, Connecticut and was involved in an officer capacity in a variety of children’s literature organizations.

In 1978, Tresselt and Duvoisin teamed up for a final book, What Did You Leave Behind? a story for children emphasizing the importance of observation. While this was Tresselt’s final original book, in the eighties and nineties, he revisited nine of his earlier books, revising the text in some cases and in others also releasing them with new illustrations.

After a long and accomplished life, a series of professional roles, a fruitful and abundant career as a children’s author with two distinct bodies of work, Tresselt, man of second chances, passed away July 24, 2000.

Picture Books

Hide and Seek Fog by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin Recommended

The Mitten by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Yaroslava Mills Suggested

The Gift of the Tree by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Henri Sorensen Recommendation

White Snow, Bright Snow by Alvin R. Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin Recommended

Bibliography

Rain Drop Splash by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Leonard Weisgard 1946
White Snow, Bright Snow by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1947
Johnny Maple-Leaf by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1948
The Wind and Peter by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Gary MacKenzie 1948
Bonnie Bess, the Weathervane Horse by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Marylin Hafner 1949
Sun Up by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1949
The Little Lost Squirrel by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Leonard Weisgard 1950
Follow the Wind by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1950
Hi, Mister Robin! by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1950
Autumn Harvest by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1951
The Rabbit Story by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Leonard Weisgard 1952
Follow the Road by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1953
A Day with Daddy by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Helen Heller 1953
I Saw the Sea Come In by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1954
Wake up, Farm! by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1955
Wake up, City! by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1957
The Frog in the Well by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1958
The Smallest Elephant in the World by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Milton Glaser 1959
Timothy Robbins Climbs the Mountain by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1960
(With Wilbur Wheaton) An Elephant Is Not a Cat by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Tom Vroman 1962
Under the Trees and through the Grass by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1962
How Far Is Far? by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Ward Brackett 1964
The Mitten: An Old Ukrainian Folktale by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Yaroslava Mills 1964
A Thousand Lights and Fireflies by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by John Moodie 1965
Hide and Seek Fog by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1965
The World in the Candy Egg by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1967
The Old Man and the Tiger by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Albert Aquino 1967
The Tears of the Dragon by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Chihiro Iwasaki 1967
The Fox Who Traveled by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Nancy Sears 1968
(With Nancy Cleaver) The Legend of the Willow Plate by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Joseph Low 1968
The Crane Maiden by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Chihiro Iwasaki 1968
Helpful Mr. Bear by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Kozo Kakimoto 1968
Ma Lien and the Magic Brush by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Kei Wakana 1968
It's Time Now! by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1969
The Witch's Magic Cloth by Alvin Tresselt 1969
How Rabbit Tricked His Friends by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Yasuo Segawa 1969
The Rolling Rice Ball by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Saburo Watanabe 1969
The Fisherman under the Sea by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Chihiro Iwasaki 1969
The Beaver Pond by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1970
Eleven Hungry Cats by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Noboru Baba 1970
A Sparrow's Magic by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Fuyuji Yamanaka 1970
Gengoroh and the Thunder God by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Yasuo Segawa 1970
The Land of Lost Buttons by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Kayako Nishimaki 1970
The Hare and the Bear and Other Stories by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Yoshiharu Suzuki 1971
Ogre and His Bride by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Shosuke Fukuda 1971
Lum Fu and the Golden Mountain by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Daihacki Ohta 1971
The Little Mouse Who Tarried by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Kozo Kakimoto 1971
Wonder-Fish from the Sea by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Irmgard Lucht 1971
Stories from the Bible by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1971
The Dead Tree by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Charles Robinson 1972
The Little Green Man by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Maurice Kenelski 1972
The Nutcracker by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Seiichi Horiuchi 1974
What Did You Leave Behind? by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1978

Born June 26, 1905 in Chicago, Illinois
Died June 28, 1985

Lynd Ward was a US graphic artist active from the late 1920’s onwards, a particularly pivotal period in both the fields of art as well as children’s books. In the field of children’s literature there were pioneers and innovators such as Wanda Gag (with whom Ward shared a proclivity for woodblock prints) beginning to carve out a path independent of the traditions of Europe. Other developments included the spread of comics and the first ventures into what we now call a graphic novel. Lynd Ward was not only in the forefront of these trends; he was one of the acknowledged masters.

Ward was born June 26, 1905 in Chicago, Illinois into a religious family. His father, Harry F. Ward, was a Methodist minister and professor. Due to his father’s career they lived a number of places during Ward’s childhood including Illinois, Massachusetts and New Jersey. Ward’s childhood health was not all that great. His condition was helped by the summer place that the family maintained in Lonely Lake, Ontario. The freedom of roaming the woods and close interactions with nature and the wild were to show up in his later works.

Ward claimed that he early developed the desire to be an artist based on the realization that the palindrome of his family name was DRAW.

Ward attended Columbia University, graduating in 1926 with a major in fine arts. As so often happens, he left university not only with a degree but with a wife. May McNeer, a fellow student, and Lynd Ward married the week following their graduation. McNeer became a prolific author of some dozens of children’s books, twenty-seven of which were illustrated by Lynd Ward. Their marriage and collaborations lasted five decades until his passing in 1985. Following graduation and marriage, the Wards moved to Germany for a year of study at the National Academy of Graphic Arts in Leipzig.

The late twenties were a period of turbulent change in the world at large and the art world in particular. The year the Wards were in Germany in 1926-27 was an interlude of some peace and prosperity; the period was marked by the disastrous hyperinflation at the beginning of the decade, and the increasing stridency and political instability at the end of the decade. During this delicate bubble period there was an effervescence of artistic, cultural and scientific development which would have permeated even to the staid town of Leipzig.

It was in Leipzig that he was first exposed to the ideas and work of Fran Masereel and Otto Nuckel, a Belgian and a German artist respectively, exploring the frontiers of communication and testing the ideas of wordless novels for story telling. For a talented artist at the beginning of a career, a new marriage (and with a return ticket to the US) it must have been an exciting year.

In the US, change was afoot as well. There was, of course, the context of the Great Depression and the New Deal years. But on the artistic frontier, you had artists such as John Held working in woodblocks with strong contrasts in their cartoons. By the thirties you had cartoonists like Charles Addams also working in stark blacks and whites, their humor distinctly morbid in nature. In the field of children’s books, Wanda Gag’s catalytic Millions of Cats (1929 Newberry Honor), done from woodblocks, appeared in 1929. The late twenties and thirties also saw the rise of a new genre of reading material: comic books. In those early years there was an excitement of possibility – were comic books a new art form? Something for adults or for children? Were comic books a form of subversion?

In 1928, the year after their return, Ward got right down to work and demonstrated the productivity that was to characterize his entire career and produced the first three books of an oeuvre that, over his career, would eventually total some 200 illustrated books; some that he wrote himself and many authored by others. These first three were illustrations of other people’s works, including Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde. However, he was already working on his first major novel which was published in 1929, inspired by the ideas of Masereel and Nuckel.

1929, Ward published four more books saw the publication of four more books One of these, Prince Bantam, was the first collaboration between Ward and his wife May McNeer. However, the big event of the year (apart from the stock market crash in October) was the release in November of Gods’ Man, a wordless novel illustrated with 139 prints from engraved woodblocks.

Gods’ Man is a reasonably traditional variant of the Faustian bargain but its novelty of being entirely without words, breathed a life into it and a positive critical reception, which marked Ward as a new force in the field of art. Five additional wordless novels followed over the next few years. With serious art and the novelty of wordlessness Gods’ Man was clearly an event in both the art world and the publishing world. But was it an event in children’s literature?

Not really except in hindsight where Wards later work and focus on children’s book illustrations make Gods’ Man possibly pertinent. It was not published as a child’s book and the theme of a Faustian bargain is certainly more of a Young Adult narrative than one for younger children. The wordlessness of the narrative, though, does force us back to first principles. If it is reading that we want to encourage (rather than storytelling), how do wordless stories contribute to the development of reading?

I can see where an argument could be made that wordless stories do in fact help lay the foundations of skills that are in turn critical for the development of good reading capabilities. It is a story with a structured flow that requires sustained attention – one critical capacity. It requires attention to visual detail to support the interpretation of available information to fill in the unstated story – a second critical capacity. It requires an extra dose of imagination over a text-based narrative in that you are creating the narrative yourself with the prompting of the artist/author – a third and especially critical capability.

So are these wordless novels children’s stories? No, not really but if you have an older reluctant reader who is challenged by sustaining focus on the narrative flow, is not engaging their imagination in creating the narrative, and who is easily distracted, then these novels can actually be used usefully to those ends.

Outside of the art and publishing worlds though, Ward is really best known for his children’s books illustrations; of both his own stories as well as those of many others. He illustrated the works of many classic literary lights (Oscar Wilde, Goethe, Frederick Marryat, Alec Waugh, Thomas Mann, Antoine de Saint Exupery, Wary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Ernest Hemingway, R.L. Stevenson, Daniel Defoe, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Johann David Wyss, Joseph Conrad, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, William Shakespeare, and Voltaire) as well as contemporary children’s authors who were to become classics in their turn (Hildegard Hoyt Swift, Padraic Colum, Esther Forbes, Ann N. Clark, Marguerite Henry, Jean Fritz, and Scott O’Dell).

While his early work was substantially focused on woodblocks, Ward was an extremely versatile artist and worked with techniques and media far beyond woodblocks including, watercolors, oil, lithography, etc. In fact most his children’s works are in watercolors and inks rather than woodblocks.

There are three landmark Ward classics that anchor his position amongst children’s illustrators 1) The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge , 2) The Biggest Bear, and 3) The Silver Pony. After his wife May McNeer, the next author with whom Ward most frequently collaborated was Hildegard Hoyt Swift. Their first effort was Little Blacknose at the very beginning of Ward’s career in 1929 and was followed by five further books over the course of thirty some years. 1942 saw the release of The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge which is the story for which Swift is best known and was the first major pylon on which Ward’s reputation in children’s books has rested. Done in ink washes and colors, The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge is a tale of what happens when one technology (an old brick lighthouse in this instance) is apparently supplanted by another (a high bridge with its own light). It is a charming story in itself and engagingly illustrated by Ward and has proved enduringly popular over the years. The fact that the lighthouse was saved and still can be seen in New York adds an element of satisfying veracity to the tale.

It is interesting to note that Lynd Ward was a contemporary of Virginia Lee Burton and their respective careers have elements of tangency. She also started her career in the late 1920’s with her first book being published in 1929. Her themes of technological displacement (Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel published in 1939), civic action to save a beloved municipal icon (Maybelle the Cable Car published in 1952) and recycling (The Little House published in 1942) are all joined together in Swift and Ward’s The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge (1942). Ward and Burton both approached their work by creating the visual story first and only then writing the text to bring the story together, with an objective to use as little text as possible and having the visual illustration carry as much of the story as possible.

The second classic children’s story is one which Ward wrote himself, The Biggest Bear, which was published in 1952 and received the 1953 Caldecott Medal. Drawing on his love of the outdoors and his childhood experiences in Lonely Lake, Ontario, Ward tells the tale of a young boy setting out to bag himself a bear skin and ending up with a bigger handful of bear than he anticipated. Part of the strength of this tale, beyond Ward’s illustrations, is the sense of pending traumatic disaster with which he imbues the tale and from which he rescues the protagonist and his friend, the bear, at the end. This is a great story for introducing to young children the idea of planning ahead as well as taking responsibility for the consequences of one’s own actions. From a narrative and illustration perspective, I highly recommend this story. If you have philosophical grounds for opposing the thought of hunting, the depiction of children with guns, etc. this would not be the book for you.

There is a lesser known third book, The Silver Pony, which achieved critical and popular reception when it was released in 1973. In this story for children, Ward returns to the experiments of his early career when he was writing for adults. The Silver Pony is another wordless book but this time focused on the child as “reader”. As with the comments above about his wordless books for adults, The Silver Pony can be an excellent exercise for engaging a child in an unusual exercise and putting them in control of the story. I personally enjoy wordless stories for the opportunity they provide for elaboration of themes, diversions into detail and other acts of customization. That being said, as a parent reading to a child, it is more work. Be prepared.

After a long and hugely productive life, and leaving a number of masterpieces of children’s literature still enjoyed by children today, Lynd Ward passed away on June 28, 1985.

Picture Books

The Biggest Bear by Lynd Ward Highly Recommended

The Cat Who Went to Heaven by Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth and illustrated by Lynd Ward Suggested

The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge by Hildegarde Swift and illustrated by Lynd Ward Highly Recommended

The Silver Pony by Lynd Ward Recommended

Independent Reader

Early Thunder by Jean Fritz and illustrated by Lynd Ward Suggested

Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes and illustrated by Lynd Ward Recommended

Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss and illustrated by Lynd Ward Suggested

Young Adult

Gods' Man by Lynd Ward Suggested

Mad Man's Drum by Lynd Ward Suggested

Bibliography

Lola the Bear by Henry Milner Rideout and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1928
The Begging Deer and Other Stories of Japanese Children by Dorothy Rowe and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1928
Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1928
God's Man: A Novel in Woodcuts by Lynd Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1929
Prince Bantam by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1929
Traveling Shops: Stories of Chinese Children by Dorothy Rowe and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1929
Little Blacknose: The Story of a Pioneer by Hildegarde Hoyt Swift and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1929
Madman's Drum: A Novel in Woodcuts by Lynd Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1930
Wonder Flights of Long Ago by Mary Elizabeth Barry and P. R. Hanna and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1930
Sir Bob by Salvadore Madariaga and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1930
Midsummer Night by Carl Wilhelmson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1930
Waif Maid by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1930
Faust (limited edition) by Johann W. von Goethe and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1930
Children of the New Forest by Frederick Marryat and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1930
Jockeys, Crooks, and Kings by Winfield Scott O'Connor and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1930
Spice and the Devil's Cave by Agnes D. Hewes and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1930
Stop Tim! The Tale of a Car by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1930
The Cat Who Went to Heaven by Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1930
Hot Countries by Alec Waugh and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1930
Ching Li and the Dragons by Alice W. Howard and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1931
The Story of Siegfried by Richard Wagner and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1931
"Most Women . . ." by Alec Waugh and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1931
Impassioned Clay by Lleyelyn Powys and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1931
Wild Pilgrimage: A Novel in Woodcuts by Lynd Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1932
Now That the Gods Are Dead by Llewelyn Powys and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1932
The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1932
A Christmas Poem by Thomas Mann and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1932
Prelude to a Million Years by Lynd Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1933
The White Sparrow by Padraic Colum and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1933
Southern Mail by Antoine de Saint Exupery and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1933
In Place of Profit: Social Incentive in the Soviet Union by Harry F. Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1933
The Flutter of an Eyelid by Myron Brinig and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1933
Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1934
Nocturnes by Thomas Mann and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1934
The Man with Four Lives by William J. Cowen and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1934
An Almanac for Moderns by Donald Culross Peattie and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1935
Topgallant: A Herring Gull by Marjorie Medary and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1935
One of Us: The Story of John Reed by Granville Hicks and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1935
Song without Words by Lynd Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1936
The Haunted Omnibus by Alexander Kinnan Laing and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1936
Vertigo by Lynd Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1937
Bright Island by Mabel L. Robinson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1937
A Book of Hours by Donald Culross Peattie and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1937
Story of Odysseus by W. H. D. Rouse and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1937
Birds against Men by Louis J. Halle and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1938
Porpoise of Pirate Bay by F. Martin Howard and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1938
House by the Sea by Hildegarde Hoyt Swift and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1938
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1938
Runner of the Mountain Tops: The Life of Louis Agassiz by Mabel L. Robinson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1939
Beowulf by William Ellery Leonard and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1939
Last Hunt by Maurice Genevoix and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1940
Le Comte de Monte-Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1941
Primer of Economics by Stuart Chase and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1941
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1942
The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge by Hildegarde Hoyt Swift and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1942
The Sangamon by Edgar Lee Masters and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1942
Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1942
Fog Magic by Julia L. Sauer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1943
Johnny Tremain: A Novel for Old and Young by Esther Forbes and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1943
Journey into America by Donald Culross Peattie and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1943
Moriae Encomium; or, In Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1943
The Innocent Voyage by Richard Arthur Warren Hughes and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1944
The Gold Rush by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1944
The Covered Wagon by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1944
Reunion in Poland by Jean Karsavina and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1945
America's Paul Revere by Esther Forbes and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1946
Many Mansions, from the Bible by Jessie Mae Orton Jones and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1947
The Golden Flash by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1947
North Star Shining: A Pictorial History of the American Negro by Hildegarde Hoyt Swift and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1947
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1948
The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1948
Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss (With Lee Gregori) and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1949
America's Ethan Allen by Stewart Hall Holbrook and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1949
The California Gold Rush by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1950
America's Robert E. Lee by Henry Steele Commager and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1951
Strong Wings by Mabel L. Robinson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1951
John Wesley by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1951
The Biggest Bear by Lynd Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1952
Up a Crooked River by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1952
Mrs. Wicker's Window by Carley Dawson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1952
The Story of Ulysses S. Grant by Jeannette Covert Nolan and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1952
Conquest of the North and South Poles by Russel Owen and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1952
The Black Sombrero by Nanda Weedon Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1952
Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1952
The Mexican Story by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1953
Arabian Nights by Padraic Colum and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1953
Martin Luther by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1953
God's Story Book: A First Book of Bible Stories for Little Catholics by and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1953
War Chief of the Seminoles by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1954
The Horn That Stopped the Band by Arthur Hudson Parsons and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1954
Little Baptiste by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1954
Sign of the Seven Seas by Carley Dawson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1954
Santiago by Ann N. Clark and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1955
Dragon Run by Carley Dawson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1955
Explorer's Digest by Leonard F. Clark and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1955
High Flying Hat by Nanda Weedon Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1956
America's Abraham Lincoln by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1957
Armed with Courage by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1957
The Edge of April: A Biography of John Burroughs by Hildegarde Hoyt Swift and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1957
The Canadian Story by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1958
Bible Readings for Boys and Girls by Anonymous and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1959
Gaudenzia: Pride of the Palio by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1960
Brady by Jean Fritz and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1960
The Alaska Gold Rush by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1960
My Friend Mac: The Story of Little Baptiste and the Moose by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1960
The Wildest Horse Race in the World by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1960
Lord Jim: A Tale by Joseph Conrad and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1960
The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1961
Hi Tom by Nanda Weedon Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1962
From the Eagle's Wing: A Biography of John Muir by Hildegarde Hoyt Swift and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1962
America's Mark Twain by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1962
The American Indian Story by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1963
Give Me Freedom by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1964
Five Plays from Shakespeare by William Shakespeare and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1964
Profile of American History by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1964
Nic of the Woods by Lynd Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1965
A Peculiar Magic by Annabel Johnson and Edgar Johnson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1965
The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1965
Dream of the Blue Heron by Victor Barnouw and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1966
The Wolf of Lambs Lane by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1967
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson by Thomas Jefferson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1967
Early Thunder by Jean Fritz and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1967
Go, Tim, Go! by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1967
The Secret Journey of the Silver Reindeer by Lee Kingman and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1968
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1970
Stranger in the Pines by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1971
Stories from the Bible by Alvin Presselt and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1971
The Treasure of Topo-el-Bampo by Scott O'Dell and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1972
The Silver Pony: A Story in Pictures by Lynd Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1973
The Story of George Washington by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1973
Storyteller without Words: The Wood Engravings of Lynd Ward by Lynd Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1974
Bloomsday for Maggie by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1976
A Relevant Memoir: The Story of the Equinox Cooperative Press by Henry Hart and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1977
Poem upon the Lisbon Disaster by François Marie Arouet de Voltaire and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1977
Inner Room by Lynd Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1988