Franz August Rudolph de Santis Dobiáš (May 11, 1900 – January 10, 1976), known as Frank Dobias, was an Austrian-born American illustrator of children's books. Among many other works, his illustrations for the Japanese version of Little Black Sambo made the book a bestseller in Japan, selling well over a million copies between 1953 and 1988.
Dobias was born in Gloggnitz, Austria-Hungary, the son of Franz Dobiáš Sr. from Bohemia and Anna Maria Katharina Fondi, of Italian noble descent. [1] His father and uncle were landscape painters. His maternal grandfather and uncle, both named August Fondi, were architects. He grew up in Vienna, where he attended the Kunstgewerbeschule and Kunst Akademie in Vienna. Frank Dobias studied under Franz Cižek and Alfred Roller. [2]
He emigrated to the United States in 1923 and settled in Pennsylvania, [3] where he started his professional career as illustrator mostly for Macmillan Publishers books. The illustrations used in the Japanese best-seller were originally drawn for Little Black Sambo published from Macmillan in 1927. [4]
The Macmillan 1927 version was revived from Komichi Shobo Publishing, a Japanese publisher in Tokyo, in 2008.
A picture book combines visual and verbal narratives in a book format, most often aimed at young children. With the narrative told primarily through text, they are distinct from comics, which do so primarily through sequential images.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1899.
John Rea Neill was a magazine and children's book illustrator primarily known for illustrating more than forty stories set in the Land of Oz, including L. Frank Baum's, Ruth Plumly Thompson's, and three of his own. His pen-and-ink drawings have become identified almost exclusively with the Oz series. He did a great deal of magazine and newspaper illustration work which is not as well known today.
The Carnegie Medal for Illustration is a British award that annually recognises "distinguished illustration in a book for children". It is conferred upon the illustrator by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) which inherited it from the Library Association. CILIP is currently partnered with the audio technology company Yoto in connection with the award, though their sponsorship and the removal of Greenaway’s name from the medal proved controversial.
The Story of Little Black Sambo is a children's book written and illustrated by Scottish author Helen Bannerman and published by Grant Richards in October 1899. As one in a series of small-format books called The Dumpy Books for Children, the story was popular for more than half a century.
Helen Brodie Cowan Bannerman was a Scottish children's writer. She is best known for her first book, Little Black Sambo (1899).
Sambo originally Zambo is a derogatory label for a person of African descent in the Spanish language. Historically, it is a name in American English derived from a Spanish term for a person of African and Native American ancestry. After the Civil War, during and after the Jim Crow era the term was used in conversation, print advertising and household items as a pejorative descriptor for black people. The term is now considered offensive in American and British English.
Arthur Burdett Frost, usually cited as A. B. Frost, was an American illustrator, graphic artist, painter and comics writer. He is best known for his illustrations of Brer Rabbit and other characters in the Joel Chandler Harris' Uncle Remus books.
Epaminondas is a children's story that was originally a folk tale that was orally transmitted in the Black community of the Southern States of the United States. A little boy named Epaminondas makes a series of amusing mistakes which are caused when he does the right thing at the wrong time, or they are caused when he takes metaphorical language literally. The humor derives from the problem of miscommunication between adults and children. The story was first published in 1911, and it quickly became popular. The 1911 book has been widely criticized for racial stereotyping, and later versions of it have attempted to rectify this.
Kitaooji Shobo Publishing Ltd. is a publishing company based in Kyoto, Japan. Founded in 1948, it specializes in academic publishing, especially in the psychology, education and social welfare areas. Its annual total sales is about ¥500,000,000, or $5 million.
Jerry Pinkney was an American illustrator and writer of children's literature. Pinkney illustrated over 100 books since 1964, including picture books, nonfiction titles and novels. Pinkney's works addressed diverse themes and were usually done in watercolors.
Dorothy Pulis Lathrop was an American writer and illustrator of children's books.
Lisbeth Zwerger is an Austrian illustrator of children's books. For her "lasting contribution to children's literature" she received the international Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1990.
Gustaf Adolf Tenggren was a Swedish-American illustrator and animator. He is known for his Arthur Rackham-influenced fairy-tale style and use of silhouetted figures with caricatured faces. Tenggren was a chief illustrator for The Walt Disney Company in the late 1930s, in what has been called the Golden Age of American animation, when animated feature films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Bambi and Pinocchio were produced.
Farshid Mesghali is an Iranian animator, graphic designer, illustrator, animator, and writer who has lived in the United States since 1986. He received the international Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1974 for his "lasting contribution" as a children's illustrator.
Frederick Abbott Stokes was an American publisher, founder and long-time head of the eponymous Frederick A. Stokes Company.
William Francis Ver Beck was an American illustrator known for his comedic drawings of animals.
There are more than 100 illustrators of English-language editions of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871), with many other artists for non-English language editions. The illustrator for the original editions was John Tenniel, whose illustrations for Alice and Looking Glass are among the best known illustrations ever published.
Sam and the Tigers: A New Telling of Little Black Sambo is a 1996 Children's picture book by Julius Lester and illustrator Jerry Pinkney. It is a retelling of the classic story by Helen Bannerman and is about a young boy, Sam, who outwits a group of hungry tigers.