Robert John Byrd (born January 11, 1942) is an American author and illustrator from Haddonfield, New Jersey. [1] [2]
Byrd was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Following high school, Byrd joined the U.S. Navy in 1961, leaving in 1962 to attend Trenton Junior College. After a year at Trenton, he switched to study at the Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts). [3]
Byrd wrote and illustrated five picture books including Leonardo, Beautiful Dreamer, which chronicles thematically the life, and work of Leonardo da Vinci. [2] [3]
"I always drew as a child, but oddly enough never thought of it as a profession, or what you did when you grew up..Out of all my creative work, illustrating children's books gives me the greatest satisfaction. It is my 'fine art'. It keeps me going aesthetically. The books have a permanence and a quality of something meaningful." [3]
He has also illustrated at least sixteen books for other authors, including Jack Stokes, Robert Kraus, Bruce Kraus, Laura Amy Schlitz, Kathleen Krull, Marilyn Jager Adams, and Paula Fox. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
His work has been exhibited by the Society of Illustrators, the Philadelphia Art Alliance, and The Rosenfeld Gallery, in Philadelphia. He has also been exhibited in various locations within Switzerland, Italy, and Illinois. His work is a part of permanent collections at the Free Library of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia College of Art. [1] [2] [3]
He has won the Golden Kite Award, and received other accolades from the Children's Book Council and the Society of Illustrators. [2] [3]
Robert is a member of the Graphic Artists Guild, Philadelphia Children's Reading Round Table, and the Philadelphia College of Art Alumni Association. [3] And he teaches Children's Book Illustration at the University of the Arts, and Moore College of Art and Design, in Philadelphia. [1] [2]
Maurice Bernard Sendak was an American author and illustrator of children's books. He became most widely known for his book Where the Wild Things Are, first published in 1963. Born to Polish-Jewish parents, his childhood was affected by the death of many of his family members during the Holocaust. Sendak also wrote works such as In the Night Kitchen, Outside Over There, and illustrated many works by other authors including the Little Bear books by Else Holmelund Minarik.
Kinuko Yamabe Craft is a Japanese-born American painter, illustrator and fantasy artist.
Robert Roger Ingpen AM, FRSA is an Australian graphic designer, illustrator, and writer. For his "lasting contribution" as a children's illustrator he received the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1986.
Ed Tse-chun Young is a Chinese-born American illustrator and writer of children's picture books. He won one Caldecott Medal for the year's best American picture book and for his lifetime contribution as a children's illustrator he was twice the U.S. nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Award.
Jessie Willcox Smith was an American illustrator during the Golden Age of American illustration. She was considered "one of the greatest pure illustrators". A contributor to books and magazines during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Smith illustrated stories and articles for clients such as Century, Collier's, Leslie's Weekly, Harper's, McClure's, Scribners, and the Ladies' Home Journal. She had an ongoing relationship with Good Housekeeping, which included a long-running Mother Goose series of illustrations and also the creation of all of the Good Housekeeping covers from December 1917 to 1933. Among the more than 60 books that Smith illustrated were Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and An Old-Fashioned Girl, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Evangeline, and Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses.
Marguerite de Angeli was an American writer and illustrator of children's books including the 1950 Newbery Award winning book The Door in the Wall. She wrote and illustrated twenty-eight of her own books, and illustrated more than three dozen books and numerous magazine stories and articles for other authors.
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.
Gordon Frederick Browne was an English artist and a prolific illustrator of children's books in the late 19th century and early 20th century. He was a meticulous craftsman and went to a great deal of effort to ensure that his illustrations were accurate. He illustrated six or seven books a year in addition to a huge volume of magazine illustration.
Robert Kraus was an American children's author illustrator, cartoonist and publisher. His successful career began early at the New Yorker, producing over hundreds of cartoons and nearly two dozen covers for the magazine over 15 years. Afterwards, he pivoted his career to children's literature, writing and illustrating over 100 children’s books and publishing even more as the founder of Windmill Books Publishing House. His body of work is best remembered for depicting animal heroes who always try their best and never give up, which were ideals important to him at an early age.
Mark Podwal is an artist, author, filmmaker and physician. He may have been best known initially for his drawings on The New York Times Op-Ed page. In addition, he is the author and illustrator of numerous books. Most of these works — Podwal's own as well as those he has illustrated for others— typically focus on Jewish legend, history and tradition. His art is represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Israel Museum, the National Gallery of Prague, the Jewish Museums in Berlin, Vienna, Stockholm, Prague, New York, among many other venues.
Robert Donald Graham, better known as Bob Graham, is an Australian author and illustrator of picture books, primarily for very young children.
Earl Bradley Lewis is an American artist and illustrator. He is best known for his watercolor illustrations for children's books such as Jacqueline Woodson’s The Other Side and Jabari Asim’s Preaching to the Chickens: The Story of Young John Lewis.
Clara Elsene Peck was an American illustrator and painter known for her illustrations of women and children in the early 20th century. Peck received her arts education from the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts and was employed as a magazine illustrator from 1906 to 1940. Peck's body of work encompasses a wide range, from popular women's magazines and children's books, works of fiction, commercial art for products like Ivory soap, and comic books and watercolor painting later in her career. Peck worked during the "Golden Age of American Illustration" (1880s–1930s) contemporaneous with noted female illustrators Jessie Willcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green and Violet Oakley.
Robert Casilla is an American artist and illustrator of award-winning children's books. He has illustrated over 30 children's books, including biographies and multicultural stories. His illustrations are influenced by his Hispanic background.
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David Alan Parkins is a British cartoonist and illustrator who has worked for D.C. Thomson, publisher of The Beano and The Dandy. Now based in Canada, he illustrates children's picture books.
Sue Ellen Brown is an artist living in Birmingham, Alabama.
Harold Hume Piffard was a British artist, illustrator, and one of the first British aviators. He studied art at the Royal Academy Schools in London, exhibiting his first painting at the Royal Academy in 1895. He painted a wide variety of subjects in oils and watercolour, including history paintings. At the same time he worked as an illustrator, both for periodicals such as The Strand Magazine and The Illustrated London News, and illustrating novels. From 1907 he became interested in aviation, and began flying in 1909 in an aircraft he built himself. He made his first flights in West London near his Chiswick home; in 1910 he flew at Shoreham-by-Sea, near his old school, Lancing College.
Symeon Shimin was a Russian born American artist and illustrator of Russian Jewish descent. He was principally known as an artist of Hollywood Film Posters and as an award-winning illustrator of 57 children's books including two that he authored himself, I wish there were two of me and A special birthday. His fine art, developed throughout his life, includes the highly acclaimed mural Contemporary Justice and The Child created in 1936, that took four years to complete. Other notable work includes the painting The Pack that he completed in 1959.