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Gary Paulsen Obituaries

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filmed in 2010

Gary Paulsen died suddenly in the middle of October. He was in his early 80s. For reasons that I’m unable to understand, I did not become aware of his death (despite being online every day) until this past weekend. The following obituaries will be added to, as major ones appear. His memoir, Gone To The Woods, was an ACHUKA Book of the Day at the start of the year.

Guardian

Independent

LA Times

New York Times

Publishers Weekly

School Library Journal

Washington Post

 

from the Publishers Weekly obit.:
David Levithan, publisher and editorial director at Scholastic, provided a favorite anecdote: “The very first time in my Scholastic career I was interviewed by the New York Times, I spent most of my time raving about Gary Paulsen’s Soldier’s Heart, which is not a Scholastic book. I just loved it so much that I had to talk about it. When we repackaged his backlist here, I happily stepped in and found that when I had a question for him, I often got a response from his agent like, ‘I’m afraid he’s away on a boat for a few weeks. There’s no way to get in touch with him.’ Which felt right. Finally, at one loud, crowded convention dinner, he came up to me out of the blue, said, ‘My agent told me I should meet you,’ then led me out to a balcony where we could talk. It’s something I’ll always remember. I feel generations of readers learned from Gary’s books how their lives intersect and interact both with the natural world and the tides of history. Many were not published by Scholastic, but our company got them into the hands of millions of kids through our book clubs and book fairs, where he’s been a favorite author for decades, and will be for many decades to come.”

quoted in the LA Times obit.:
“The need to write hit me like a brick. I had a career and a family and a house and a retirement plan and I did all the things that responsible grown-ups do until suddenly, irrevocably, I knew had to write,” he explained in the introduction to the “Hatchet” anniversary edition. “I edited a grubby men’s magazine and, every night, I slaved over short stories and articles for two editors who ripped me to shreds every morning.

“They didn’t leave a single sentence unscathed, but they taught me to write clean and fast. And the dance with words gave me a joy and a purpose I had been looking for my entire life.”

From a recommended New York Times author profile back in 2006:
Mr. Paulsen is an unapologetic misanthrope, children excepted. “I don’t have anything against individuals,” he says. “But the species is a mess.”

Mitsumasa Anno

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1984 Hans Christian Andersen winner, Mitsumasa Anno, has died aged 94. He was known especially for wordless pictorial bird’s-eye view “Journey” books, in which a character’s travels embrace a country’s art, literature, culture, and history. His first book, English title Topsy-Turvies – described by Anita Silvey as “an amazing collection of improbable constructions filled with impossible perspectives and angles” – was published in 1968, when he was already in his forties. Before that he had been a primary school teacher. Anno’s Alphabet, published in 1974, received the Boston-Globe Horn Book Award and was specially  commended  for that year’s Kate Greenaway Medal (awarded that year to Pat Hutchins for The Wind Blew).

In 1985, Shirley Hughes wrote a profile of him for Books for Keeps, describing the artist as having “about him more than a touch of the genial magician, a flamboyant westernised style combined with the formal politeness of his fellow country-men; he is quick, observant and very, very intelligent.”

Hughes goes on to observe, “He shows a similar brilliant sleight-of-hand with perspective as the artist he is sometimes compared with, M. C. Escher. They both play on the way our eye perceives three-dimensional form on a flat surface. But Anno is the more humanly fanciful and, unlike Escher, works in colour which he uses with stunning fluency. He is not, one senses, particularly drawn to the role of interpreting other people’s texts. Responding very strongly to poetry, he feels (as many writers do) that a good piece of literature needs no further illustration to enhance its meaning. His books explore the converse of this reaction; that a visual medium doesn’t need words to explain the story.”

There is a Mitsumasa Anno Art Museum designed by world-renowned architect, Tadao Andou.

Japanese Times
Asahi Shimbun
Wikipedia

Death Of An Animator

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The New York Times reports the death of Gene Deitch, “an Oscar-winning animator who created the early television cartoon “Tom Terrific” and went on to make countless cartoons and film versions of popular children’s books for more than a half-century, died on April 16 in Prague, where he lived. He was 95.”

Deitch  made animated version of Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are” (1975),  Tomi Ungerer’s “Moon Man” (1981) and many other other well-regarded children’s books.

An excellent, recommended obituary.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/arts/gene-deitch-dead.html

Tomie dePaola dies aged 85

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from the Washington Post report:

Tomie dePaola, whose picture-book tales of bullied children, Christian saints and a magically overflowing pasta pot delighted generations of young readers and sold millions of copies, died March 30 at a hospital in Lebanon, N.H. He was 85.

The cause was complications from surgery, said his literary agent, Doug Whiteman. Mr. dePaola had suffered a fall last week at his studio barn in New London, N.H.

A former art and theater teacher, Mr. dePaola published more than 200 picture, pop-up and chapter books in his five-decade career. On at least six occasions, he illustrated 10 or more books in a single year.

His illustrations of tousle-haired children and talking animals were uncluttered and uncomplicated, drawn with bold lines and soft colors in acrylic paints, watercolors, ink and collage — in almost every medium except pastel, Mr. dePaola said, which is “too dusty and makes me sneeze too much.”

Ann McGovern – New York Times Obit

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New York Times

Ann McGovern, a prolific author for children whose work ranged over women’s history, adaptations of folk tales and her own exploits as a globe-trotting adventurer, died on Saturday at her home in Manhattan. She was 85.

…

The author of more than 50 titles that have collectively sold millions of copies, Ms. McGovern was known in particular for “Stone Soup,” her 1986 retelling of the traditional story, with illustrations by Winslow Pinney Pels.

Her books carried artwork by some of the foremost picture-book illustrators of the era, among them “Too Much Noise” (1967), illustrated by Simms Taback; “Zoo, Where Are You?” (1964), illustrated by Ezra Jack Keats; “Nicholas Bentley Stoningpot III” (1982), illustrated by Tomie dePaola; and “Little Wolf” (1965), with pictures by Nola Langner, a friend since grade school who illustrated a half-dozen of Ms. McGovern’s books.

Before turning to writing full time, Ms. McGovern was a children’s book editor in New York.

via Ann McGovern, Author, Is Dead at 85; She Made ‘Stone Soup’ a School Staple – The New York Times.