best children's book illustrations of all time

Penguin Press Office/Penguin Books Ltd.

Sometimes a great illustrator gets short shrift, especially when teamed up with a famous author. Sure you remember that book you had your parents read to you over and over again when you were a kid, and you probably loved the pictures. But can you name the illustrator?

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• P.D. Eastman

  Philip Dey Eastman is the author and illustrator of numerous classic beginner reader books such as Go, Dog. Go!, Are You My Mother?, and A Fish Out of Water. Before teaming up with Theodor Geisel (better known as Dr. Seuss) to write the early reader series in the late 1950s, Eastman had studied art at the National Academy of Design in New York City, worked as an animator at the Walt Disney Studios in Los Angeles, and helped develop the cartoon character Mr. Magoo at United Productions of America.

• Clement Hurd

  Goodnight Moon (1947) by Margaret Wise Brown is often one of the first books given to newborn babies. Those beautiful, deceptively simple illustrations of the objects in a young rabbit's room were drawn by Clement Hurd. He didn't start out illustrating books. In the early 1930s he studied painting in Paris with famed Cubist Fernand Léger. He illustrated more than 100 books, but Goodnight Moon, and its companion The Runaway Bunny (1942), remain his most famous.

• Robert McCloskey

  McCloskey's Caldecott Medal-winning book Make Way for Ducklings (1941), which chronicles a family of mallards trying to make a home for themselves in bustling Boston, is central to that city's identity. So much so that in the Public Garden in downtown Boston, where much of the action in the book takes place, there is a monument to the story and its creator in the form of 8 bronze duckling statues following a bronze mother mallard. McCloskey studied art at the National Academy of Design in New York City and painted murals in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston before finding success as a book illustrator.

• Ezra Jack Keats

  The Snowy Day (1962) is another one of those books many kids have on their shelf before they even know their ABCs. He was born Jacob "Jack" Ezra Katz to immigrant parents and was an artist from a young age, winning awards throughout his schooling. Keats was a successful commercial artist in New York City before turning his attention to book illustration. His illustrations show his training in fine arts and the influence of Cubism and Abstraction. They earned him a Caldecott Medal in 1963 for The Snowy Day.

• Eric Carle

  His best known book is The Very Hungry Caterpillar (1969), the story of a caterpillar who can't seem to fill up. He eats too much and gets a stomach ache, so he eats a leaf. Soon enough, he's no longer a caterpillar but "a beautiful butterfly." That book, also a Caldecott winner, has been translated into more than 50 languages. To create his distinct illustrations, Carle collaged hand-painted papers to form his trademark colorful images. Before he became a book illustrator, he studied art in Stuttgart, Germany, and had a career in graphic design and commercial art in New York City. In 2002 he and his wife founded the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts.

• Virginia Lee Burton

  Winner of the 1943 Caldecott Medal for The Little House, Burton also wrote and illustrated classics like Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (1939), Katy and the Big Snow (1943), and Maybelle the Cable Car (1952). Her books often touched on how to cope with the onset of technological advances and sociological changes. Burton was also a dancer and designer, and the founder and director of an arts and crafts artists' colony, the Folly Cove Designers (1938-69), which evolved out of casual art lessons she offered to neighbors in her community on Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Burton and her collective were known for their textile design.

• Ludwig Bemelmans

  "In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines…" lived Bemelmans's beloved character Madeline. In 2014 she and her friends (the ones in two straight lines) turned 75. Bemelmans published the first Madeline book in 1939, and followed it in 1953 with Madeline's Rescue, which earned the 1954 Caldecott Medal. Bemelmans, though he loved art, did not intend to become the author of books. In fact he started out in the hotel and restaurant businesses. In the end he published novels, children's books, and nonfiction works. He also contributed to magazines like The New Yorker and Vogue. In all, the original Madeline series consisted of six titles, but since Bemelmans's death in 1962, his grandson, John Bemelmans Marciano, has picked up with Madeline where the elder Bemelmans left off and has published numerous new titles.

• Maurice Sendak

  Best-known for his Caldecott-winning book Where the Wild Things Are (1963) and In the Night Kitchen (1970), Sendak is one of the most famous children's book illustrators. He worked for a time after high school as a window display designer at FAO Schwartz in New York City in the late 1940s while he took night classes at the Art Students League. In 1951 he was hired to illustrate his first book, The Wonderful Farm by Marcel Ayme. Over the course of 60 years, Sendak illustrated more than 60 books. Beginning in the 1970s he also designed sets and costumes for opera and ballet. Though some of his books were criticized for containing content inappropriate for children (see the very naked Mickey in In the Night Kitchen), Sendak was enormously successful and influential to generations of writers and illustrators. In 2009 a full-length movie was released of Where the Wild Things Are, directed by Spike Jonze.

• Quentin Blake

  The illustrator of more than 250 books, Blake's fame stems primarily from his fruitful collaboration with Roald Dahl. Blake's scratchy, cartoonish illustrations of characters with exaggerated features grace the pages of titles like Matilda (1988), The Twits (1980), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) and James and the Giant Peach (1961). He is arguably England's most beloved illustrator and was honored by being named that country's first Children's Laureate (1999-2001). In 2002 he paved the way to establish House of Illustration, a London-based museum and non-profit dedicated to illustrators.

• Barbara Cooney

  Winner of two Caldecott Medals (1959 for Chanticleer and the Fox, 1980 for Ox-Cart Man), Cooney had a very long, prolific, and accomplished career. She illustrated her first book in 1940 (Ake and His World, by Bertil Malmberg), and in 1941 published the first book that she both wrote and illustrated, King of Wreck Island. She collaborated with a slew of well-known authors, notably with Margaret Wise Brown (Where Have You Been? and Christmas in the Barn, both 1952, and The Little Fir Tree, 1954). She is probably best-known for Miss Rumphius (1982), Island Boy (1988), and Hattie and the Wild Waves (1990), three largely autobiographical stories that she wrote late in her career. By the time she died in 2000, Cooney had illustrated over 100 books in the span of 60 years.

best children's book illustrations of all time

Source: https://www.britannica.com/list/10-childrens-book-illustrators-to-know

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