Jan Pieńkowski Obituaries
Jan Michał Pieńkowski, illustrator, writer and designer, born 8 August 1936, died 19 February 2022.
He was presented with the BookTrust Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019.
Gary Paulsen Obituaries
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.
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.”
Jerry Pinkney Obituaries
Jerry Pinkney, US book illustrator, as died aged 81.
Here are links to the obituaries:
Jill Murphy – obituaries
ACHUKA is saddened to learn of the death of Jill Murphy, known mostly for creating the Worst Witch, but best loved in our household for her 1980 Kate Greenaway winning picture book Peace At Last.
This page will add the major obituaries as they appear:
Eric Carle – Obituaries
Eric Carle died 23 May, aged 91.
The major obituaries:
Beverly Cleary Obituaries
An ACHUKA Book of the Day in December 2020
Beverly Cleary has died aged 104. Full obituaries will be listed here as they appear.
Norton Juster Obituaries
Norton Juster, author of the children’s classic The Phantom Tollbooth [1961], has died aged 91.
Here are links to the main obituaries (will be added to as they appear):
Mitsumasa Anno
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.
Death Of An Animator
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