Books in Twayne's United States Authors Series series

There was once a family of seven brothers and sisters. Sadly, their father, an artist frustrated in his ambitions, died when the oldest child, a girl, was only fifteen. His dying wish was that she take up his dream of becoming a successful artist: "What Papa couldn't do," he told her, "Wanda would have to finish."It is hard to say how much her father's request urged Wanda Gag on to become the accomplished graphic artist, illustrator, and author that she did, but it does appropriately cast her life in the mold of the fairy tales she variously created, translated, and illustrated during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. In this meticulously researched assessment of Gag's life in relation to her work for children, Karen Nelson Hoyle traces her transformation from eldest daughter in a poor family from New Ulm, Minnesota, to admired and influential artist and author in the nascent industry of modern children's book publishing in New York City.Wanda Gag championed fairy tales. While their popularity ebbed and flowed during the thirty-year span of her working life, Gag devoted much of her career as a children's book author to the imaginative retelling and illustrating of fairy tales. She translated from the German and illustrated three collections of Grimm fairy tales as well as the single volume Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. And her original stories (such as The Funny Thing, about a gentle mountain man trying to appease a strange animal who eats children's dolls, and Snippy and Snappy, about two wayward mice) share with fairy tales the qualities of being fantastic and unbelievable on the one hand and wise and instructive about the nature of human experience on the other.But of all ten books Gag published for children, the most loved and best known remains her first, Millions of Cats, published in 1928. With more than 1 million copies now in print, Millions of Cats employs several innovative techniques - some now staples of picture books - for which Gag became recognized: imaginative use of the two-page spread; hand-lettered text that reflects the spirit of the illustrations; a purposeful employment of line drawing with black ink on white paper, thereby reviving a form found in nineteenth-century newspaper and magazine illustrations.The story of a lonely old couple who seek out a cat for companionship and for a time end up with "Hundreds of cats, Thousands of cats, Millions and billions and trillions of cats" at their doorstep, Millions of Cats typifies Gag's method of telling a story: sparely, with careful consideration of how to advance plot and develop character while linking the text with the illustrations. The book also portrays her favorite subjects: hilly landscapes, country people, animals, flowers, homey cottages, the furnishings of domestic life.Relying on her extensive knowledge of Gag's life and work - gleaned from access to Gag's personal and professional papers and correspondence with people who knew her - Hoyle has not only drawn a precise and detailed portrait of a gifted artist and author but also delineated a seminal period in the history of children's book publishing.

"Each author really has a theme" Newbery Award-winner Elaine Lobl Konigsburg has said, "and Identity apparently is mine." Given how important "knowing who you are" is to 8- to 14-year-old readers, it is not difficult to see why the books of so witty a writer and illustrator should have such broad appeal among this audience. The author of eight novels, two story collections, and three picture books for younger readers, E. L. Konigsburg not only takes as her "task" a young person's struggle to make sense of his or her identity, but she situates this struggle in American suburbia, whose bright, neat, and orderly surface can mask a stringent, often cruel demand for conformity.In the first critical study to cover all Konigsburg's fiction, Dorrel T. Hanks, Jr., examines how her stories allow readers to distance themselves from their own identity struggles and thus to see those struggles in a new light. The myriad elements that can darken a child's life - arguments with siblings, anger at parents who "don't understand," coping with divorce and a single parent - Konigsburg handles with unfailing hopefulness, Hanks contends. He shows how her unfaltering wit and sometimes-irritating but always-likable protagonists ease the burden of such family discords and help readers gain some perspective on their own development.Approaching the novels chronologically - but addressing the historical novels and story collections in separate chapters - Hanks explores the stylistic development of this self-described suburban housewife, who had done graduate work in chemistry and studied painting before beginning her first novel as a 35-year-old mother of three. Hanks points up the parallels between Konigsburg's personal history and the distinctive, wholly unprecedented plots she devises. Who else, he asks, would have two children run away from home to secretly take up residence in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art as do the sister and brother in From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler?For Hanks, plot, characterization, and a wit that distinguishes her work from that of other top-rank children's writers are the hallmarks of Konigsburg's writing. He calls special attention to Konigsburg's singularity in illustrating her own books: her drawings convey the texts' settings and characterization, and sometimes even themes, with much greater immediacy than would the visual interpretation of another artist.Throughout this study Hanks compares the fiction of Konigsburg - the first and so far only author to win the Newbery Award for both the year's best (Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth) and second best (From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler) children's book - with that of other writers who address the "middle-aged" child of 10 to 14. Anyone interested in this much-acclaimed writer or in children's literature generally will find E. L. Konigsburg a valuable critical overview.

Author and illustrator Maurice Sendak is best known for Where the Wild Things Are, a controversial work when it first appeared that has since become a venerated classic. Sendak has continued to write acclaimed children's books, including Higgelty Piggelty Pop, Juniper, Dear Mili, and In the Night Kitchen, but has also branched out into other artistic endeavors, including opera and film. He is the first American illustrator to win the Hans Christian Andersen Medal. His influence on children's literature has been immense, both in his challenge to the conventionality of so much children's literature, to his introduction of visceral, chaotic imagery evocative of the sometimes scary aspects of children's inner lives. His attention to the total effect of bookmaking has set a new production standard for illustrated children's books.This book considers the full range of Sendak's work, giving special attention to the unity of his artistic achievement, exploring the parallels between the visual "language" of his illustrations and the rhythms and themes of his prose. Sonheim's study is the first to examine the linguistic and artistic structure of Sendak's work from both a literary and visual perspective. All of Sendak's major works are critically analyzed, and the reader will find Sonheim's exploration of the eclectic influences on Sendak's work especially illuminating. This groundbreaking study will interest scholars, teachers, and students of children's literature, as well as those interested in art history and graphic design.

Katherine Paterson is the consummate storyteller, a crafter of tales in which characters must deal with the most elemental hopes and fears in settings - be it a Chesapeake Bay island or the mountains of China - that are alternately blissful and beatific, terrifying and desperate. In a sensitive analysis of the novels and stories of this award-winning children's author, Gary D. Schmidt finds that Paterson is, in a subtle way, a didactic writer, informed by her hopeful and ethical vision of the future.Here is a writer, Schmidt argues, who does not shy away from horrendous topics - unwanted foster children, the death of a schoolchild's best friend, rape, murder, political intrigue, religious mania, and war. He finds that Paterson's books - among them the National Book Award-winning Master Puppeteer (1976) and The Great Gilly Hopkins (1978) and the Newberry Award-winning Bridge to Terabithia (1977) and Jacob Have I Loved (1980) - are successful when the reader journeys with the author through distressing situations and then arrives, in a moment of grace, at a place of spiritual enlightenment.Paterson's characters, Schmidt argues, search for fathers, for families, for love and acceptance, for themselves, they recall the characters of Flannery O'Connor, who also find themselves caught in moments of distress and then find, like Paterson's characters, moments of grace. As Schmidt shows, that moment may come in the building of a bridge or in coming to understand the implications of a carol or poem or in resolving to live a life of burdens shared.Schmidt begins this study with a biographical essay about Paterson's life, drawn from her own essays as well as from an interview with her he conducted at her home in Barre, Vermont. In the balance of the book he addresses her copious work, beginning with her early historical fiction and proceeding on to the novels that explore her major themes - of the plight of prodigal children and the search for true family. Later chapters examine Paterson's more recent historical fiction and her retelling of folk tales.Throughout his discussion Schmidt focuses on the stories' elements of hope, for, as Paterson has said in a National Book Award acceptance speech, she wants to be "a spy for hope." Schmidt's lucid study brings readers a closer understanding of this remarkable "spy."

Shel Silverstein has achieved unprecedented success and longevity in a highly competitive field of childrens poetry. In these collections Silverstein addresses lifes pleasures and pitfalls by focusing on a schoolchilds humor; employing simple cartoons and mischievous jokes, he mentions the unmentionable but never preaches. Silverstein has brought poetry to generations of children who would otherwise avoid it. In this first book-length study devoted to Silverstein, Ruth K. MacDonald presents a thought-provoking appreciation of the poets contributions to childrens literature, particularly childrens poetry and humor. Arguing that Silversteins works will endure because they speak for children so precisely and without historical limitations, MacDonald gives much attention to the poetry collections while also treating the picture books and other works that preceded and followed them. A balanced assessment of a forceful and provocative voice in childrens literature, SHEL SILVERSTEIN will appeal to students and teachers at the secondary and college levels and find a ready niche in courses on popular culture, childrens literature, and elementary education and reading. 01

In 1931 Jean de Brunhoff introduced French children to a little elephant by the name of Babar, a gentle, charming character whose journey from orphaned forest dweller to dapper, convivial sophisticate is chronicled in L'Histoire de Babar, the first in a series of stories that has captivated children the world over. In this book and the six that followed, de Brunhoff created an idyllic world in which Babar, wearing spats and driving a little red convertible, marries, has children, travels extensively, and is eventually crowned king of the elephants, all the while espousing a quintessentially French ideal--bonheur--and placing a high premium on family affection, discipline, and benevolence. Laurent de Brunhoff finished some of the manuscripts left incomplete on his father's death in 1937 and then wrote Babar stories of his own, continuing a storytelling legacy in which the perplexities of modern living are always reconciled with traditional values. The rendering of situations in which aplomb and elegance occur simultaneously with action and adventure is the hallmark of the de Brunhoffs' illustrations, so distinct with their bold lines and primary colors.In her unique study of the Babar milieu, Ann Meinzen Hildebrand looks at the de Brunhoffs' complete works, analyzing the thematic development of the stories and commenting on the essential role of the illustrations. Acknowledging the differences between the work of father and son, Hildebrand attributes the series' continuing popularity to the way in which both artists have created an elephant cosmos that is a mirror of real and ideal life. She shows how de Brunhoff pere et fils have eschewed simple "animal fantasy" for fascinating characters who respond to everyday situations, both tragic and frivolous, thoughtfully and act on the principles of perseverance, patience, hope, and courage. Hildebrand's comprehensive study establishes the genius of the de Brunhoffs and explains how one kindly, nondidactic elephant in a derby hat has become such a socializing force for young readers.