Paul O. Zelinsky (1953-) Biography

Born 1953, in Evanston, IL; Education: Yale University, B.A., 1974; Tyler School of Art, M.F.A., 1976. Hobbies and other interests: Cooking, eating.

Addresses

Office—54 Orange St., Brooklyn, NY 11201.

Career

Artist, author, and illustrator of books for children, 1977—.

Member

Graphic Artists Guild, Children's Illustrators and Authors, Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.

Honors Awards

Best Books Award, School Library Journal, 1979, for How I Hunted the Little Fellows, 1981, for The Maid and the Mouse and the Odd-shaped House: A Story in Rhyme, 1982, for Ralph S. Mouse, and 1986, for Rumpelstiltskin; American Institute of Graphic Arts Book Show selection, 1980, for How I Hunted the Little Fellows, and 1982, for The Maid and the Mouse and the Odd-shaped House; Best Illustrated Children's Books of the Year Award, New York Times, 1981, for The Maid and the Mouse and the Odd-shaped House, and 1985, for The Story of Mrs. Lovewright and Purrless Her Cat; Society of Illustrators Show selection, 1982, for Three Romances, and 1986, for Rumpelstiltskin; Children's Choice Award, International Reading Association, 1982, for The Maid and the Mouse and the Odd-shaped House; Bratislava Biennale selection, International Board on Books for Young People, c. 1983, for The Sun's Asleep beyond the Hill, 1987, for Rumpelstiltskin, and 1989 and 1991; Parents' Choice Award, Parents' Choice Foundation, 1984, for The Lion and the Stoat, 1985, for The Story of Mrs. Lovewright and Purrless Her Cat, 1986, for Rumpelstiltskin, and 1990, for Hansel and Gretel; "Graphic Gallery" outstanding picture book selection, Horn Book, 1984, for The Maid and the Mouse and the Odd-shaped House; America's Children's Books of the Year Award, Child Study Association, 1985, for The Story of Mrs. Lovewright and Purrless Her Cat; Caldecott Honor Book Award, and Bologna International Children's Book Fair exhibition selection, both 1985, both for Hansel and Gretel; Ten Best Children's Books Award, Redbook, 1986, Caldecott Honor Book Award, 1987, and White Raven Book Award, International Youth Library, all for Rumpelstiltskin; Parents' Choice Picture Book award, Reading Magic Award, and Redbook award, all 1990, all for The Wheels on the Bus; Best Illustrated Book of the Year award, New York Times, and Best Books designation, Publishers Weekly, both 1994, and Caldecott Honor Book Award, 1995, all for Swamp Angel; Caldecott Medal, 1998, and Notable Books selection, American Library Association, 1998, both for Rapunzel; Best Illustrated Book of the Year award, New York Times, 2001, for Awful Ogre's Awful Day, and 2002, for Knick-Knack Paddywhack.

Writings

FOR CHILDREN; SELF-ILLUSTRATED

(Adapter) The Maid and the Mouse and the Odd-shaped House: A Story in Rhyme, Dodd (New York, NY), 1981.

The Lion and the Stoat, Greenwillow (New York, NY), 1984.

(Reteller) Rumpelstiltskin, Dutton (New York, NY), 1986.

(Adapter) The Wheels on the Bus, Dutton (New York, NY), 1990, tenth anniversary edition, Dutton (New York, NY), 2000.

(Reteller) Rapunzel, Dutton (New York, NY), 1997.

(Adapter) Knick-Knack Paddywhack: A Moving Parts Book, Dutton (New York, NY), 2002.

FOR CHILDREN; ILLUSTRATOR

Avi, Emily Upham's Revenge; or, How Deadwood Dick Saved the Banker's Niece: A Massachusetts Adventure, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1978.

Boris Zhitkov, How I Hunted the Little Fellows, translated from the Russian by Djemma Bider, Dodd (New York, NY), 1979.

Avi, The History of Helpless Harry: To Which Is Added a Variety of Amusing and Entertaining Adventures, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1980.

Winifred Rosen, Three Romances: Love Stories from Camelot Retold, Knopf (New York, NY), 1981.

Naomi Lazard, What Amanda Saw, Greenwillow (New York, NY), 1981.

Beverly Cleary, Ralph S. Mouse (also see below), Morrow (New York, NY), 1982.

Mirra Ginsburg, adapter, The Sun's Asleep behind the Hill, Greenwillow (New York, NY), 1982, reprinted, Walker Books (New York, NY), 2000.

David Kherdian, The Song in the Walnut Grove, Knopf (New York, NY), 1982.

Rika Lesser, Etruscan Things (poetry), Braziller (New York, NY), 1983.

Beverly Cleary, Dear Mr. Henshaw, Morrow (New York, NY), 1983.

Jack Prelutsky, Zoo Doings: Animal Poems, Greenwillow (New York, NY), 1983.

Rika Lesser, reteller, Hansel and Gretel, Dodd (New York, NY), 1984.

Lore Segal, The Story of Mrs. Lovewright and Purrless Her Cat, Knopf (New York, NY), 1985.

Pamela Pollock, editor, The Random House Book of Humor for Children, Random House (New York, NY), 1988.

Beverly Cleary, Strider, Morrow (New York, NY), 1991.

E. Nesbit, The Enchanted Castle, Morrow (New York, NY), 1992.

Carl Sandburg, More Rootabagas, Knopf (New York, NY), 1993.

Anne Isaacs, Swamp Angel, Dutton (New York, NY), 1994.

E. Nesbit, Five Children and It, Morrow (New York, NY), 1999.

Jack Prelutsky, Awful Ogre's Awful Day, Greenwillow Books (New York, NY), 2000.

(With others) Beverly Cleary, The Mouse Collection: The Mouse and the Motorcyle/Runaway Ralph/Ralph S. Mouse, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2001.

Rita Golden Gelman, Doodler Doodling, Greenwillow (New York, NY), 2003.

Sidelights

Caldecott Medal winner Paul O. Zelinsky is noted not only for the richness and experimental nature of his artwork, but also for his versatility. As Linnea Lannon noted in a Detroit Free Press profile of the artist, Zelinsky has illustrated everything from "Beverly Cleary's Newbery-winning Dear Mr. Henshaw to the toddler must-have pop-up book, The Wheels on the Bus." Zelinsky himself observed in the same profile that "I've recently decided that I should be recognized by my unrecognizability." Yet award committees, in particular the Caldecott, seem to favor his illustrations for such classics as Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, and the American tall tale Swamp Angel, all of which have a museum quality, old-masters or folk-art feel to them. As Zelinsky told Horn Book interviewers Sylvia and Kenneth Marantz, "I try to make the book talk, as it talks to me, and not worry whether it is in my style or not.… I get a kick out of doing each book differently."

Zelinsky was born in Evanston, Illinois. His father, a college professor of mathematics, often taught away from his main campus, however, so Zelinsky moved around as a child, becoming the perpetual new kid in school. One constant was his ability at drawing—encouraged by his parents—and he usually became known as the class artist. He busied himself making artistic doodling in the margins of all his papers, and even had one of his early efforts submitted—when he was still in nursery school—to Highlights magazine for inclusion in a 1957 issue showcasing student art. Re-discovered after Zelinsky's 1998 Caldecott Medal award, this illustration was called an "impressively sophisticated picture of a fan-waving Geisha," by Sally Lodge in Publishers Weekly. Interestingly, it is also something of a foreshadowing of the maid in his 1981 book, The Maid and the Mouse and the Odd-shaped House.

Favorite books for Zelinsky as a child were The Story of Ferdinand and Margaret Wise Brown's The Color Kittens, along with a Little Golden Book, The Tawny, Scrawny Lion with illustrations by Tengren. These were books whose "feelings come to me as a sort of flavor," Zelinsky wrote in his entry for Children's Books and Their Creators. "I know that when I call up my earliest memories, what I remember seeing and hearing is accompanied by a flavor-like sense of what it felt like to be there and see that." By high school, Zelinsky's artistic proclivity had taken the form of illustrating stories being read in English class or poems written by friends. He took up printmaking, and etched linoleum cuts for such projects. "Why I didn't see all this as leading up to a career in illustration, I will never know," he told Sixth Book of Junior Authors and Illustrators. Instead, Zelinsky's early ambitions ranged from ventriloquism to architecture and natural history.

It was not until Zelinsky was studying at Yale University and enrolled in a class taught by noted author/illustrator Maurice Sendak on the history and making of children's books that he first saw the possibilities of a career as an illustrator. He suddenly realized that he had been doing such work all along, and here was an example of a person, Sendak, who had made a fine career of it. "I fell short in my art school training," Zelinsky noted in Children's Book and Their Creators, "because I never quite believed in Quality of Edge or Color Relationship as a painting's only reason for being; I was, and still am, happier trying to put these abstract qualities in the service of something else, such as a story." An early collaboration with another Yale student led to a book project accepted by a publisher, but that came to nothing when the house was subsequently bought and dissolved by a larger publisher.

Despite this early setback, Zelinsky was not discouraged from his new goal of illustrating books. Partly through the help of an uncle who worked for the New York Times, he began showing his portfolio around New York, and soon won assignments. He also continued studying the fine arts and earned a master's degree in painting. A career in teaching was short-lived, though. "I was a lousy teacher and … teaching wasn't what I wanted to do," Zelinsky recalled in his Horn Book interview. Meanwhile, showing his portfolio to publishers paid off when an editor at Pantheon thought of him when an illustrator for Avi's Emily Upham's Revenge was needed. This Victorian tale was followed by illustrations for How I Hunted the Little Fellows, a Russian story set in the 1890s, and once again Zelinsky needed to research historical settings for his illustrations. That story won a Best Books Award from School Library Journal in 1979. A further Avi title, The History of Helpless Harry, appeared next, and in 1981 Zelinsky created his own picture book, The Maid and the Mouse and the Odd-shaped House, based on a nineteenth-century school exercise designed for the blackboard; children would in turn draw their representations of such texts. "The text came from a school notebook in the editor's grandmother's house," Zelinsky noted in his Horn Book interview. "It sounded like an 1890s idea of a funny rhyme." Zelinsky adapted the text and created award-winning illustrations for it in a flat, board-game format, including characters that might have stepped out of a Mother Goose book. Already evident in this first solo effort was Zelinsky's painterly approach to layout, with his thin-line characters set against open space. Booklist's Barbara Elleman observed that pale shades of lavender, yellow, blue, and peach create "an appropriately whimsical background for this nonsensical old folk rhyme," and concluded that even after the initial reading, the "inventiveness" and "humor" endure. Sally Holmes Holtze commented in School Library Journal that "Zelinsky uses line, space and color in a unique way." Award committees agreed with this assessment, and Zelinsky's picture book became a New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Book of 1981.

More work illustrating the texts of others followed. Reviewing the illustrator's work for Naomi Lazard's What Amanda Saw, Virginia Haviland noted in Horn Book that Zelinsky is able to "capture the softness and fluffiness of fur and of the downy breasts of birds," and further commented that the artist's assemblages are reminiscent of The Dog's Grand Dinner Party, a famous picture book of the nineteenth century by McLoughlin. Zelinsky also illustrated several books for well-known children's author Beverly Cleary, the first of these being Ralph S. Mouse. Research for this book took Zelinsky to actual fifth-grade classrooms and also entailed the purchase of two mice to get the main character just right. Further Cleary titles illustrated by Zelinsky include the Newbery Medal-winning Dear Mr. Henshaw and the 1991 work Strider.

Praise also greeted his illustrations for Lore Segal's The Story of Mrs. Lovewright and Purrless Her Cat. Harking back to his theory of visual effects having flavors of their own, Zelinsky saw this book as having "a tangy quality," as he noted in Children's Books and Their Creators. His inspiration for the illustrations for Segal's text was a dill pickle; "Not how a pickle looks, certainly, but how I think the taste of a pickle would look."

Illustrations for Rika Lesser's adaptation of Hansel and Gretel brought Zelinsky his first Caldecott Honor Book award. His research for this title took him on long walks in the Connecticut woods. "When I remembered [the story], the image I first thought of wasn't the house; it was of the children lost in the big woods and how small the children are," Zelinsky recalled in his Horn Book interview. He patterned his illustrations after seventeenth-century Dutch genre paintings such as those by the painter Steen, whose work he viewed at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. He also drew inspiration from a painting his great-grandmother once did of Hansel and Gretel. Zelinsky worked from detailed pencil drawings projected onto stretched paper. From these he created watercolor paintings which were in turn overpainted in oils. The result was, as Sylvia and Kenneth Marantz noted in Horn Book, a "pastiche of seventeenth-century painting styles." Regarding the sequencing of his illustrations for Hansel and Gretel as well as for other creations, Zelinsky noted in Horn Book that he actually works out of sequence with the story. "I tend to learn how to do what I'm doing better as I do the book," Zelinsky commented, "and the later drawings are generally better than the first ones.… So the book would start out crudely and become facile at the end." To avoid this, Zelinsky consciously jumps around in his selected illustrations.

Meanwhile, Zelinsky was also busy on his own self-illustrated titles. The Lion and the Stoat appeared in 1984, detailing three episodes in the competition between two great artists, a lion and a stoat. A Kirkus Reviews contributor called the book "affectionate and sparkling" and "a showcase for the elegant wit of author/illustrator Zelinsky (who displays the assurance here of a much older pro)." In part based on Natural History by Pliny the Elder, the book again shows Zelinsky's fondness for research and pastiche and creates, as a reviewer for Booklist commented, "a very satisfying ending for the lion and the stoat, as well as for lucky readers and listeners absorbed in the comic, full-color illustrations." A Junior Bookshelf critic concluded that the "bright and engaging" illustrations "should give continued pleasure."

In 1986, Zelinsky brought out his retelling of Rumpelstiltskin, the classic story of a strange little man who helps a miller's daughter spin straw into gold as a present for the king. The catch is that the girl must give him her first-born child in return. Mary M. Burns noted in Horn Book that reviewing a book by Zelinsky is both a "pleasure and a challenge," and found this new title to be "truly a tour de force." Burns also commented that Zelinsky "has decided to present his version of the familiar Grimm story as fine art through large scale, richly hued oil paintings, notable for careful composition and exquisite rendering of detail." Again Zelinsky engaged in museum research to produce figures in the style of the Northern Renaissance. Burns concluded her review by calling the illustrations "comprehensible, dynamic, compelling, and unforgettable." Betsy Hearne noted in the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books that the author/illustrator "has caught the human complexity represented in fairy tales and layered it visually into an absorbing book." In a School Library Journal review, Susan H. Patron concluded that "Zelinsky's smooth re-telling and glowing pictures cast the story in a new and beautiful light." Rumpelstiltskin won Zelinsky his second Caldecott Honor Book Award, and picked up many other awards and honors.

A movable board book, The Wheels on the Bus is based on the children's song of the same name, and was inspired by the author's daughter Anna and her love of such books. However, Zelinsky's single venture into board books is characteristically unique in its approach. He wanted to make the parts of the bus movable with pull tabs, and also to convey the "flavor" of the song; in this case that of bubblegum. "The pictures needed plenty of rhythm, and the sense of sinking your teeth into something," Zelinsky commented in Children's Books and Their Creators. He opted for thick oil paint to achieve this effect. Elizabeth S. Watson, writing in Horn Book, observed that the resulting book is "fresh, lively, and imaginative," while Roger Sutton, in the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, admired the "inherent wit" with "post-modern pinks and purples" and "woozy perspectives" reminiscent of the work of twentieth-century muralist Thomas Hart Benton.

More of Zelinsky's incredible variety is served up in illustrations for books compiled and written by others, including poet Carl Sandburg's More Rootabagas and turn-of-the-twentieth-century British children's writer E. Nesbit's The Enchanted Castle. Legendary in terms of difficulties were his illustrations for Anne Isaacs's Swamp Angel, a retelling of a tall tale about a female Paul Bunyan, the greatest woodswoman in Tennessee. Booklist's Hazel Rochman noted that "Zelinsky's detailed oil paintings in folk-art style are exquisite, framed in cherry, maple, and birch wood grains." Invisible to readers, numerous delays and difficulties involving the ultra-thin, wood-veneer paper Zelinsky chose for his illustrations, as well as printing problems, plagued Swamp Angel, according to Publishers Weekly contributor M. P. Dunleavy, and for his prodigious efforts, Zelinsky won his third Caldecott Honor Book Award.

Zelinsky finally achieved the highest Caldecott honor with his 1997 adaptation of Rapunzel. In the Journal of Youth Services in Libraries, the author/illustrator explained both the textual and visual inspirations for his Rapunzel. His well-researched retelling is a blend of the Grimms' version and of earlier French and Italian ones, and his illustrations are conscious quotations from Italian Renaissance paintings by Rembrandt, Masaccio, and Raphael. He took many details of architecture and dress from these paintings, as well as central figures and stylistic attitudes. Zelinsky concluded in his article that he hoped "my quotations could be used by educators to foster a feeling for the beauty of Renaissance art."

Years in the making, Zelinsky's Rapunzel tells of a childless couple excited by the fact that the wife has become pregnant. She develops a craving for the herb rapunzel, a salad green somewhat reminiscent of arugula, and her husband is caught cutting some in the sorceress's garden. This sorceress does not kill the man, but makes a bargain—she will have the child his wife is carrying. After the birth, the baby is cared for by the sorceress, who names her Rapunzel, and at the age of twelve the young girl is shut away in a tower. Only the sorceress can enter the tower, by climbing the flowing locks of Rapunzel's hair. But one day a prince climbs into the castle and impregnates Rapunzel. Infuriated, the sorceress blinds the prince, cuts Rapunzel's hair, and sends them off to wander separately in the woods. Rapunzel gives birth to twins, the couple find each other again, and Rapunzel's tears cure the prince of his blindness. They come home to live in the prince's court. In Zelinsky's telling, the story resonates on many levels—a story about mothers and daughters, coming of age, and discovering the world outside.

Maud Lavin, reviewing Rapunzel in the New York Times Book Review, reminded parents "to notice, and allow young readers to notice, that it is a story of puberty." Lavin also drew attention to Zelinsky's Rennaissance-style paintings: "It's a fun style for children—the expressive actions and features of the characters are literally highlighted; the landscape and clothes seem alive; the smallest lines are sharply clear." Booklist's Rochman concluded that such a lovingly illustrated text will hold readers: "Children—and adults—will pore over the intricate detail and glowing colors; they will also be moved by the mysterious tale of nurture and passion and terror." Zelinsky's work paid off: he won the 1998 Caldecott Medal for Rapunzel.

After winning the Caldecott Medal, Zelinsky returned to illustrating books for other authors. In 1999 his artwork was featured in a gift edition of E. Nesbit's Five Children and It, and he served as the illustrator for Mirra Ginsburg's The Sun's Asleep behind the Hill. In 2001 Zelinsky earned a New York Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year award for Awful Ogre's Awful Day by Jack Prelutsky. Deemed "a divinely wretched celebration of subversity" by a contributor to Publishers Weekly, Awful Ogre's Awful Day is a collection of poems that describe a day in the life of the title character. Readers are treated to scenes of Awful Ogre devouring Scream of Wheat for breakfast, writing love letters to an ogress, and curling up in bed next to a spiny cactus. "Each of the eighteen double-page spreads is delicately framed, most often with tiny objects, such as repeating mice, spiders, and storm clouds, from the larger illustrations," noted a Horn Book critic. "These fragile figures contrast with the high-spirited scenes" of Awful Ogre enjoying his daily activities. Lisa Gangemi Kropp, reviewing Awful Ogre's Awful Day in School Library Journal, praised Prelutsky's "inventive verse," calling it the "perfect accompaniment" to Zelinsky's artwork.

Zelinsky also illustrated Rita Golden Gelman's picture book Doodler Doodling. While daydreaming at school, a young girl sketches in her spiral notebook, allowing her imagination to run wild. Her doodles begin simply enough: the drawing for "Teachers teaching" shows a trio of silly-looking instructors, and is followed by illustrations of "Fliers flying," "Fliers teaching," "Teachers flying," and "Teachers teaching flying fliers." The girl's final take on the subject, "Fliers flying teachers," is illustrated with pilots sitting atop winged instructors. Gillian Engberg, reviewing Doodler Doodling in Booklist, stated that "Zelinsky's whimsical illustrations give this title its gleeful, inventive humor."

Zelinsky's Knick-Knack Paddywhack; A Moving Parts Book is "a paper-engineering and bookmaking marvel as well as a freewheeling romp," according to School Library Journal critic Luann Toth. Adapted from the traditional children's song, Knick-Knack Paddywhack follows the adventures of a boy and his dog. During their day of fun, the pair encounter ten tiny old men who appear in unusual places—on the boy's hand and inside his shoe, for example. Readers pull tabs, lift flaps, and turn wheels to create action, which includes helping the tiny men come "rolling home." "I've always liked the song," Zelinsky told Marie-Caroline Martin in the New York Daily News. "I was singing it in my head one day, and I realized that there didn't have to be just one man: I realized it could be ten men, playing knick-knack on my thumb, on my knee, everywhere."

To design his elaborate work, Zelinsky enlisted the help of paper engineer Andrew Baron, who developed the book's mechanisms. Each copy of Knick-Knack Paddy-whack was assembled by hand by a team of fifty people who took more than an hour to complete their task. "Knick-Knack Paddywhack's mechanics are in all likelihood the most intricate ever created in a movable book," Zelinsky noted on his Web site. Knick-Knack Paddy-whack garnered the New York Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year award, the first moving-parts book to receive that honor.

Lannon noted in the Detroit Free Press that "what has raised Zelinsky into the first rank of children's book illustrators is not just the pictures but the way they integrate with text." "It's a great deal of fun, this work," Zelinsky admitted of his job in Sixth Book of Junior Authors and Illustrators. "I learn things. I make things. And I feel I get to change my mind all the time about what I want to do—my mind changes with every new book I take on. And when I realize that there are people around the country who will read my books and (I hope) enjoy the pictures, I think: How could I have been so lucky!"