Sandra Boynton

Last updated

Sandra Boynton
Boynton DogTrain.jpg
Boynton around 2005
Born (1953-04-03) April 3, 1953 (age 71)
Orange, New Jersey, U.S.
Education
Occupations
Website Official website

Sandra Keith Boynton (born April 3, 1953) is an American humorist, songwriter, director, music producer, children's author, and illustrator. Boynton has written and illustrated over eighty-five books for children and seven general audience books, [1] as well as over four thousand greeting cards, and seven music albums. She has also designed calendars, wallpaper, bedding, stationery, paper goods, clothing, jewelry, and plush toys for various companies.

Contents

Early life and education

The third of the four daughters of Jeanne ( née  Ragsdale) and Robert W. Boynton, Sandra was born in Orange, New Jersey, and grew up in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia. [2] Her father was a noted progressive educator, scholar (collaborating on textbooks with Shakespearean scholar Maynard Mack), and publisher and co-founder of Boynton/Cook Publishers. Boynton/Cook Publishers is now owned by Heinemann.

Boynton's parents became Quakers when she was two years old. From kindergarten through 12th grade, she and her sisters attended Germantown Friends School, where their father taught English and was Head of the Upper School. Boynton has frequently cited Germantown Friends' arts-centered curriculum as central to her own "upbeat offbeat" sensibility as well as its thorough integration of the values of pacifism, independent inquiry, and individualism. She also spent part of her 10th grade year at Ackworth School near Pontefract, England.

Boynton studied Latin for five years in high school, mostly in order to avoid science classes, the scheduling of which invariably conflicted with Latin.

She went to Yale University, entering in 1970 in the college's second year of coeducation. [2] She spent the second semester of her junior year studying in Paris through Wesleyan University's program. At Yale, she majored in English and also sang sporadically with the Yale Glee Club. She had joined the Glee Club when additional singers were needed for a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at Carnegie Hall, under the direction of Leopold Stokowski. Boynton has described herself as "an enthusiastic but undistinguished alto".

At her graduation from Yale in 1974, she received a Special Master's Magna solemnly bestowed by Charles Davis, the Master of Boynton's residential college, Calhoun College. Unbeknownst to the graduation audience, the honor was actually a fiction. Boynton's grade point average did not in fact entitle her to any degree honor; but shortly before the ceremony, she had told Professor Davis in mock earnest that "my parents are here, so I'd really appreciate it if you could just mumble some Latin after my name".

Boynton intended to become a theater director. She attended the University of California, Berkeley for a year for graduate studies in drama, then transferred to the Yale School of Drama D.F.A. program; however, she did not complete the program. With the birth of her first child in 1979, Boynton postponed indefinitely a career in the theater, judging the demands of that profession not easily compatible with raising a family.

During her undergraduate and graduate years, her teachers included Cleanth Brooks, Harold Bloom, Richard B. Sewall, Maynard Mack, Maurice Sendak, Richard Gilman, Rocco Landesman, David Milch, Stanley Kauffmann, and William Arrowsmith. In an autobiographical talk given at Yale in 2002, "The Curious Misuse of a Yale Education", Boynton refers to her book Grunt (an illuminated book and recording of plainchant in Latin and Pig Latin) as "the culmination of a lifetime spent joyfully squandering an expensive education on producing works of no apparent significance".

Career

Greeting cards

Boynton's greeting card designs for Recycled Paper Greetings were at the forefront of the Alternative Cards commercial movement that began in the mid-1970s. According to RPG co-founder and president Mike Keiser, nearly 500 million copies of Boynton's distinctive humorous cards—featuring an assortment of unnamed cartoon animal characters, spare layout, and droll messages—sold between 1973 and 2003. The best known of these is a 1975 birthday card bearing images of four animals and the message "Hippo Birdie Two Ewes", a pun playing on the phrase "Happy Birthday to You". The card has sold over ten million copies to date. [3]

Books

Since the 1977 release of Hippos Go Berserk!, Boynton has published many children's books, as well as several illustrated humor books for the general market. Her books are most typically for very young children, offered in the laminated paperboard format known as board books. Nearly all of Boynton's books have been published by either Workman Publishing or Simon & Schuster. Five of her books have been New York Times best sellers: Chocolate: The Consuming Passion (1982); Yay, You! (2001); Consider Love (2002); Philadelphia Chickens (2002), which reached the number one position on the list, and was on the list for nearly a year; and Woo Hool! You're Doing Great! (2023). Six Boynton books were on the 2001 Publishers Weekly All-Time Bestselling Children's Books list: Moo, Baa, La La La! , The Going to Bed Book, Barnyard Dance, A to Z, Blue Hat, Green Hat, and Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs!. [4] More than 90 million copies of her books have been sold.[ citation needed ]

Theater

In May 1995, Boynton wrote and directed a benefit reading, On Stage—featuring Jill Clayburgh, Joe Pacheco, and Jane Curtin—for Sharon Stage in Connecticut. In November 2005, and again in November 2007 she presented songs from Philadelphia Chickens, Dog Train, and Blue Moo at the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage, co-hosting in 2007 with Davy Jones of the Monkees. In November 2006, she directed her son Keith in his own play, The Quotable Assassin, Off-Off-Broadway at Alternate Stages.

Music

In 1996, Boynton began writing and producing songs—which she has described as "renegade children's music" — with composer Michael Ford; these songs have been released as albums ( Rhinoceros Tap 1996, Philadelphia Chickens 2002, Dog Train 2005, BLUE MOO: 17 Jukebox Hits from Way Back Never 2007, FROG TROUBLE Fall 2013 and Hog Wild in 2017) and also published as book and audio disc sets. The tracks were recorded, under Boynton's direction and Ford's musical direction, by an eclectic roster of actors and musicians, including Blues Traveler, Meryl Streep, Alison Krauss, Steve Lawrence, and Eydie Gorme, John Ondrasik of Five for Fighting, Kevin Kline, Laura Linney, "Weird Al" Yankovic duetting with Kate Winslet, Patti LuPone, The Bacon Brothers with Mickey Hart, Eric Stoltz, the Spin Doctors, Mark Lanegan, Hootie & the Blowfish, Natasha Richardson, Billy J. Kramer, Scott Bakula, Eric Bazilian and Rob Hyman, The Phenomenauts, Brian Wilson, Neil Sedaka, B.B. King, Sha Na Na, Steve Lawrence, Bobby Vee, Gerry & The Pacemakers, Davy Jones of The Monkees, Dwight Yoakam, Fountains of Wayne, Kacey Musgraves, Ryan Adams, Ben Folds, Brad Paisley, Josh Turner, Darius Rucker, and Linda Eder. Boynton received a 2003 Grammy nomination for Philadelphia Chickens. The first three of these albums have been certified gold by the RIAA. In November 2010, Boynton produced and released a full-length 300-kazoo plus orchestra performance of Maurice Ravel's Boléro, titled Boléro Completely Unraveled, performed by the Highly Irritating Orchestra. Boynton played solo kazoo on this recording noting "I am at the perfect level of musical incompetence for this."

She has written the text for four choral pieces composed by Fenno Heath, Director Emeritus of the Yale Glee Club, all of which have been performed by the Yale Alumni Chorus on international tour.

Boynton is currently working on a Christmas album entitled Cows and Holly with producer Mike Ford, due for release in September 2024. It will include performances by Lyle Lovett, Patti Lupone, Yo-Yo Ma, Zooey Deschanel, and many others. [5]

Music videos

In 2008, Boynton ventured into filmmaking, creating and directing music videos of her most popular recorded songs. Her first music video released in November 2009 as a book/DVD combination, was "One Shoe Blues", starring B.B. King and a cast of assorted sock puppets. Then she directed "Penguin Lament" starring John Ondrasik of Five for Fighting, "Philadelphia Chickens" which is mostly animation and includes cameos by Kevin Bacon and Michael Bacon, and "Be Like a Duck" which features all four of her children.

Awards

Boynton received the Irma Simonton Black Award for Chloe and Maude, the National Parenting Publications Gold Medal for Barnyard Dance[ citation needed ] and for Your Personal Penguin, a Grammy Award Nomination for Philadelphia Chickens, the Eustace D. Theodore Fellowship (Yale University), the National Cartoonists Society Greeting Card Award for 1992, and the National Cartoonists Society Book Illustration Award for Blue Moo: 17 Jukebox Hits From Way Back Never, in 2008. She is the 2008 recipient of the Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Cartoonists Society's highest honor. Hippos Go Berserk! was awarded Mathical Hall of Fame status. [6]

She has received the following film festival awards for her film shorts: the Rhode Island International Film Festival Providence Prize 2010 for One Shoe Blues starring B. B. King; the Flickers North Country Film Festival 2010 Crystal Image Award for emerging artist, as director of all four films; the 2D or Not 2D Animation Festival 2011 Golden Pencil Award for Philadelphia Chickens; the Forster Film Festival 2012 Winner of Song Category for "Be Like a Duck"; and the Wilmette International Children's Film Festival 2012 Best of Fest Live Action Short Film Winner for One Shoe Blues.

Personal life

Boynton was married to writer and Olympic Bronze medalist (and fellow Yale graduate) Jamie McEwan from 1978 until his death from cancer in 2014. [2] [7] [8] In 1991, Boynton and McEwan moved with their children to the Hautes-Pyrénées region of France for a year so McEwan and his Whitewater Slalom doubles partner, Lecky Haller, could train with the French team for the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. McEwan/Haller ended in 4th Place. McEwan was a member of several whitewater expeditions to Mexico, Bhutan, British Columbia, and a National Geographic–sponsored descent of part of the Tsang-Po River (Brahmaputra) in Tibet, an ill-fated trip detailed in The Last River by Todd Balf, and in Courting the Diamond Sow by expedition leader Wickliffe W. Walker. Boynton has illustrated two of McEwan's five children's books. They have four children: Caitlin McEwan, an actress and director; Keith Boynton, a playwright and filmmaker; Devin McEwan, a Whitewater Slalom racer and member of the 2001-2016 U.S. Teams, including the 2016 U.S. Olympic Team; and Darcy Boynton, a writer and teacher. All four children sang on Philadelphia Chickens and BLUE MOO.

Boynton has appeared on numerous national television, newspaper and radio programs. Media include The Today Show , [9] USA Today , [10] American Profile , [11] NPR's All Things Considered , [12] CBS Sunday Morning , [13] The New York Times, [2] and The Wall Street Journal . [14]

Boynton works in a reconstructed 120-year-old barn on her property in rural Connecticut. [15]

Albums

Books

Children's books

General market books

Related Research Articles

<i>Timbuctoo</i> Book series by Roger Hargreaves

Timbuctoo is a series of 25 children's books, written and illustrated by Roger Hargreaves, better known for his Mr. Men and Little Miss series. It was published from 1978 to 1979, with selected reprints in 1993 and 1999. The books tell the stories of a group of animals, each of whom is named after the sound that their particular animal makes. An animated series of Timbuctoo was shown on CITV which ran from 9 January 1998 to 5 January 2000, narrated by Ronnie Corbett.

"Old MacDonald Had a Farm" is a traditional children's song and nursery rhyme about a farmer and the various animals he keeps. Each verse of the song changes the name of the animal and its respective noise. For example, if the verse uses a cow as the animal, then "moo" would be used as the animal's sound. In many versions, the song is cumulative, with the animal sounds from all the earlier verses added to each subsequent verse.

Stephen Cole is an English author of children's books and science fiction. He was also in charge of BBC Worldwide's merchandising of the BBC Television series Doctor Who between 1997 and 1999 and as executive producer on the Big Finish Productions range of Doctor Who audio dramas.

Nick Sharratt is a British author and illustrator of children's books, whose work is split between illustrating for writers, most notably Jacqueline Wilson from 1991 to 2021, and Jeremy Strong, but also Giles Andreae, Julia Donaldson and Michael Rosen. He was chosen to be the official illustrator for World Book Day 2006, and has illustrated around 250 books, including over 50 books by Wilson, among them The Lottie Project, Little Darlings and The Story of Tracy Beaker which was the most borrowed library book in the UK for the first decade of the 21st century. The books on which Sharratt and Wilson have collaborated have sold more than 40 million copies in the UK and sales of picture books illustrated by Sharratt exceed 10 million.

<i>Space Station Seventh Grade</i> Novel by Jerry Spinelli

Space Station Seventh Grade is a young adult novel by Jerry Spinelli, published in 1982; it was his debut novel. It was inspired by an odd event when one of his six children ate some fried chicken that he had been saving for the next day. The novel was intended for adults but became a young adult novel instead.

Recycled Paper Greetings, Inc. (RPG) is a Chicago-based greeting card company founded by Phil Friedmann and Mike Keiser in 1971. They became successful as one of the first greeting card companies to print their product on recycled paper, and to give their artists recognition by putting their names on the cards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Betsy Lewin</span> American childrens illustrator and writer (born 1937)

Betsy Reilly Lewin is an American illustrator from Clearfield, Pennsylvania. She studied illustration at Pratt Institute. After graduation, she began designing greeting cards. She began writing and illustrating stories for children's magazines and eventually children's books. She is married to children's book illustrator Ted Lewin and with him has co-written and illustrated several books about their travels to remote places, including Uganda in Gorilla Walk and Mongolia in Horse Song, as well as How to Babysit a Leopard: and Other True Stories from Our Travels Across Six Continents. She is arguably best known for the Caldecott Honor Book Click Clack Moo: Cows that Type.

Aliki Liacouras Brandenberg or pen name Aliki is an American author and illustrator of books for children.

Ivy Lilian Wallace was a British author/illustrator, artist and actress, best known for writing and illustrating the best-selling Pookie series and The Animal Shelf series of children's books.

<i>Minnie and Moo: Will You Be My Valentine?</i> Book by Denys Cazet

Minnie and Moo: Will You Be My Valentine? is a children's picture book from the Minnie and Moo series by Denys Cazet, first published in 2003.

<i>Click, Clack, Quackity-Quack</i> 2005 childrens picturebook

Click, Clack, Quackity-Quack: An Alphabetical Adventure is a children's picture book by Doreen Cronin. Published in 2005 by Atheneum Books, it is a sequel to Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type and was illustrated by Betsy Lewin. A sequel, Click, Clack, Splish, Splash: A Counting Adventure, followed in 2006.

<i>Click, Clack, Splish, Splash</i> 2006 childrens picturebook

Click, Clack, Splish, Splash: A Counting Adventure is a children's picture book written by Doreen Cronin and is illustrated by Betsy Lewin. Released in 2006 by Atheneum Books, it is one of the sequels to Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Weston Woods Studios</span> American film production company

Weston Woods Studios is a production company that makes audio and short films based on well-known books for children. It was founded in 1953 by Morton Schindel in Weston, Connecticut, and named after the wooded area near his home. Weston Woods Studios' first project was Andy and the Lion in 1954; its first animated film was The Snowy Day in 1964. In 1968, Weston Woods began a long collaboration with animator Gene Deitch. Later, they opened international offices in Henley-on-Thames, England, UK (1972), as well as in Canada (1975) and Australia (1977). In addition to making the films, Weston Woods also conducted interviews with the writers, illustrators, and makers of the films. The films have appeared on children's television programs such as Captain Kangaroo, Eureeka's Castle, and Sammy's Story Shop. In the mid-1980s, the films were released on VHS under the Children's Circle titles, and Wood Knapp Video distributed these releases from 1988 to 1995.

Denise K. Fleming is an American creator of children's picture books. She was born in Toledo, Ohio. She graduated in illustration from Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

James Patrick McEwan was an American slalom canoeist who competed in the 1970s and then again in the 1980s and early 1990s. He teamed up with his son Devin to compete in the 2000s. Competing in two Summer Olympics, he won a bronze medal in the C1 event at Munich in 1972.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doreen Cronin</span> American writer of childrens books

Doreen Cronin is an American writer of children's books, including Click Clack Moo: Cows That Type, a very well-received picture book illustrated by Betsy Lewin.

Louise Smit is a South African writer of children's books and creator and director of children's television programmes and characters.

<i>Moo, Baa, La La La!</i> 1982 childrens picture book by Sandra Boynton

Moo, Baa, La La La! is a 1982 children's picture book written and illustrated by Sandra Boynton about various animals and the noises they make. It was published by Little Simon Books.

Rhinoceros Tap: and 14 Other Seriously Silly Songs is an album released by Boynton Recordings in 1996, owned by author Sandra Boynton. All songs are by Boynton and Michael Ford, lyrics by Boynton, and recorded by Adam Bryant, with Michael Ford as instrumentals and backup vocals. The album can be found on Apple Music and Spotify. Boynton wrote the album because she was unhappy with the available recorded children's music. She later wrote that she sought to "create an album that would somewhat parallel that ran beneath my own childhood". She had hopes that her songs would withstand repeated listening by adults. The album was reissued in 2004 with an enhanced version of the accompanying book, listed various as Rhinoceros Tap: 15 Seriously Silly Songs and simply as Rhinoceros Tap (ISBN 0761133232).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kyle Mewburn</span> New Zealand writer

Kyle Mewburn is an Australian-New Zealand writer whose books have won many prizes and awards. She lives in Millers Flat, Central Otago, writes picture books and junior fiction and is a popular and well-known speaker at schools and literary festivals.

References

  1. ↑ "Boynton, Sandra". WorldCat Identities. Retrieved April 26, 2010.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Phyllis, K (February 17, 2008). "The Power of Whimsy". The New York Times. Retrieved April 26, 2010.
  3. ↑ CBS Sunday Morning, May 11, 2010.
  4. ↑ Roback, Diane; Britton, Jason, eds. (December 17, 2001). "All-Time Bestselling Children's Books". Publishers Weekly . Vol. 248, no. 51. Retrieved March 22, 2013.
  5. ↑ "Illustrator Sandra Boynton: The Queen of Cards - CBS News". CBS News .
  6. ↑ "Mathical Book Prizes 2021" (PDF).
  7. ↑ Bass, Carolyn (June 19, 2014). "In Memoriam: paddler and poet". Yale Alumni Magazine. Retrieved February 24, 2015.
  8. ↑ McCarthy, Ellen (September 12, 2017). "Hippos, birdies, T. rexes, pigs: How Sandra Boynton built an empire and won your child's heart". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 9, 2018.
  9. ↑ "Sandra Boynton: 'The best children's work is for everyone'". MSNBC.
  10. ↑ "At home: Order a soda, sit a spell with author/artist Sandra Boynton". USA Today.
  11. ↑ "Sandra Boynton Greeting Cards". American Profile. October 7, 2010.
  12. ↑ "Kids' Favorite Sandra Boynton Makes Music Video". NPR .
  13. ↑ "Sandra Boynton goes country with "Frog Trouble"". November 29, 2013 – via www.youtube.com.
  14. ↑ Boynton, Sandra (July 8, 2015). "A Week in the Life of Sandra Boynton". The Wall Street Journal.
  15. ↑ Lewine, Edward (2013). "Talking to the Animals, and Drawing Them, Too". The New York Times. Retrieved September 15, 2013.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.