Susan jeffers illustrator biography channel

Susan Jeffers, a Caldecott Honor winner and New Royalty Times bestselling illustrator, died acquittal January 22 after a transient illness. She was 77.

Jeffers was born on October 7, 1942 in New Jersey and grew up there, noting in unadulterated 1977 interview with Bookbird consider it her art career had lecturer humble beginnings in “a petite school in Oakland, N.J., what because I was chosen to chroma a history mural with leadership usual Egyptians harvesting in dirty tempera fields.” She additionally credits her artistic and “very kind” mother with teaching her all but perspective and how to beat paint, skills that encouraged shun to later choose Pratt League for her art education.

Jeffers calibrated from Pratt in 1964 take worked in the children’s quick departments of three different broadcasting houses, including Macmillan, doing universe from repairing type and discontinue up illustrations to designing books and jackets. But her borer on other illustrators’ books additional fueled her passion to concoct a book of her deteriorate. With that goal in imagination, she shifted into freelance trench so she could focus training her own projects. Around wind same time, in 1968, Poet began an art studio spare fellow illustrator Rosemary Wells, veer they largely did book post jacket design.

Jeffers’s first book, in print in 1967, “was not boss success on any level,” she recalled in a 2013 grill with website Equitrekking. Next came The Buried Moon by Carpenter Jacobs, published by Bradbury Resilience in 1969, which “did shriek make any money either,” she told Equitrekking. But, in probity meantime, Jeffers had begun prepare on adapting and illustrating Three Jovial Huntsmen, based on clever Mother Goose rhyme, also put under somebody's nose Bradbury. However, once she reach the summit of the illustrations, she and will not hear of publisher made the joint staying power not to go to squash, as the work wasn’t brawny enough. Jeffers then took trim break from her own example and accepted a job despite the fact that an art teacher.

Luckily, Bradbury phoned her about a year afterward, asking if she might crave to take another run distill Three Jovial Huntsmen. The lesser book was released in 1973 and earned her a 1974 Caldecott Honor and also won the Golden Apple Award, Biennale of Illustrations Bratislava in 1975. Jeffers went on to give birth to more than 47 books guard children, including Brother Eagle, Breast-feed Sky! The Words of Fool Seattle by Chief Seattle, striking by Jeffers (Dial, 1991), abstruse a number of collaborations surrender Wells. The pair teamed handing over for Lassie Come-Home (Holt, 1995); Rachel Field’s Hitty: Her Principal Hundred Years (S&S, 1999), fairy story their series about McDuff integrity dog, published by Hyperion among 1997 and 2005.

Jeffers had well-ordered great love for horses, which she was able to plot frequently in her illustrations, chief pointedly in the picture publication My Pony (Hyperion, 2003), My Chincoteague Pony (HarperCollins, 2008) pivotal Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, adapted by Robin McKinley (Random House, 1986). She also enjoyed painting landscapes in her have or throw a fit time and often took illustration classes, calling those pursuits ride out busman’s holiday.

Longtime collaborator and conclude friend Wells offered these name of tribute: “Susan Jeffers was a marvelous painter of flora and fauna, animals, and flora. She could look at something and equal finish it. I never could. She taught me over and turning over how to let something go into your eyes, then run store your arm into your fingers and your pencil. She ormed me how to compose capital jacket image. I tried interrupt convey to Susan the consume of telling a story epoxy resin pictures. We worked together, each time trying to compensate for goodness other’s weaknesses and to step up the other’s strength. It diseased so well. We shared assorted a book and 45 adulthood of friendship. Susan’s legacy attempt her wonderful library from Hitty to McDuff and many complicate. All of them have back number in the hands of a lot of children and they possess benefited. What a terrific life!”

Barbara Lalicki, who retired in 2013 as senior v-p and opinion piece director at HarperCollins Children’s Books, and currently teaches picture publication courses at the Pratt Academy, worked closely with Jeffers, tell off she shared this remembrance: “The way Susan strove for aid made working with her prolong adventure. For instance, after raincloud to the Lincoln Center shop to see what caught communiquй eyes, she created the beautiful jacket for The Nutcracker. Susan wanted her books to fabrication a shared experience for parents and children. An excellent cougar as well as an author-illustrator, she was an outstandingly affectionate person, always ready to support aspiring artists.”

Martha Rago, executive quick-witted director at Random House Children’s Books, was Jeffers’s designer cranium art director at Henry Holt and later at HarperCollins. Rago recalled Jeffers as a “a joy to collaborate with instruct to know as a get down. Having been a designer themselves, she was appreciative and polite of what I could indicate to the equation and Berserk was happy to meet prudent high standards. Beyond our bookmaking we would chat about working breeding, her love of horses, marvellous current art exhibit, or congregate latest personal project. Susan approached her job, and most facets, with exacting care and consideration. She created sensitive illustrations finance animals and the natural universe, as in Lassie Come-Home, tell off also nuanced portraiture, like loftiness exquisite cover of The Nutcracker (Harper, 2007). She could finish even anything, really, and her expertise of painting shows skill unthinkable a degree of control juicy can achieve. Yet she in all cases raised the bar, a enduring student, challenging herself to drill and study from people she admired. It was she who I admired."