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Leonard Joseph Weisgard
December 13, 1916 - January 14, 2000 |
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| Leonard Weisgard,
Caldecott award-winning illustrator of more than 200
children’s books was perhaps best known for his
collaboration with the author Margaret Wise Brown. |
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Leonard
(right) with his father Samuel |
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Weisgard was born
in New Haven, Connecticut but spent much of his early
childhood in England, where his father originally came from.
His interest in the quality of children’s books began after
his family moved back to the USA when he was 8. As a
schoolboy in New York, he was dissatisfied with the books
supplied by the public schools he attended. He found the
illustrations monotonous and thought that the world could
not be all that dreary and limited to only one color. |
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He went on to
study art at the Pratt Institute and the New School for
Social Research, where he was influenced by primitive cave
paintings, Gothic and Renaissance art and avant-garde French
illustrators of children’s books of the 1920s.
He used a wide range of colors and media in his books,
including gouache, poster paint, crayon, chalk, decoupage,
stenciling and pen and ink.
Leonard Weisgard also studied dance with Martha Graham and
worked in the field of window display. He began his career
making illustrations for magazines such as Good
Housekeeping, The New Yorker and Harper’s Bazaar.
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Leonard with Nora Edmunds
of UNICEF with reproductions of Greeting Cards. |
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| His first book, Suki, the
Siamese Pussy, was published in 1937, followed by an
adaptation of Cinderella. |
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In 1939 the first of more than two dozen collaborations with
Margaret Wise Brown was published, The Noisy Book.
Their 1947 book, The Little Island,which Brown
wrote under the pseudonym Golden MacDonald, won the
Caldecott Medal for best-illustrated children’s book. |
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Leonard Weisgard |
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Weisgard also collaborated with other children’s book
writers and wrote books he illustrated himself, sometimes under
the pseudonym “Adam Green". |
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Leonard Weisgard married Phyllis Monnot in
1951 and they had three children, Abigail (1952), Christina
(1954) and Ethan (1957).
Leonard and Phyllis often worked together creating set and
costume designs with Leonard sketching and Phyllis making
patterns so the designs could become a reality. He designed
the stage sets and costumes for several productions of the
San Francisco Ballet, including The Dryad and The
Nutcracker.
During the years he lived in Roxbury, Connecticut, Weisgard
was deeply involved with children's education. He lectured
extensively and worked closely with The American Library
Association. |
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Photo: Karsten
Damstedt Jørgensen |
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| Leonard's
studio in Glumsoe, Denmark designed by his son-in-law
Architect Per Boelskifte. |
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| Leonard Weisgard moved to
Denmark with his wife and children in 1969 where he lived
for the rest of his life. His children and grandchildren -
Ethan and Midoriko's son Yuji (1989) and daughter
Nanami (1987) - all live in Copenhagen. "Books, he once
said in an interview, have always, for as long as I can
recall, been a source of real magic in this wildly confusing
world."
(Sources: The LA Times from the 24th of January, 2000 and
The New York Times the 27th of January, 2000)
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Photo:
Karsten Damstedt Jørgensen |
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| Leonard and Phyllis
Weisgard's home in Denmark |
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