Maddaford
Illustrator Paper
SLIS 5410
p. 1
Comparison of Eric Carle and Arnold Lobel
Biography: Arnold Lobel
Arnold Lobel was born in Los Angeles, California in 1933. Shortly after his parents moved back to Schenectady, New York and divorced putting Arnold in the care of his grandparents. Gmuca (1987) states that life was happy until Kindergarten when Arnold started to become sickly. McElmeel quotes Lobel as describing his preteen years as unhappy because of his frequent hospital stays (2000, p.279.). In order to make friends, Arnold told stories and put on plays (McElmeel, 2000, p.279). Arnold Lobel graduated high school with a dream of being an illustrator and commenced his studies at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. There during a play in which they both performed, Arnold met Anita (Gmuca, 1987). Anita Kempler was a Holocaust survivor from Poland who also majored in art and participated in drama (McElmeel, 2000, p.279). They married in 1955 and had two children named Adam and Adrianne.
Lobel started his working life in advertising, but was not satisfied with that line of work. He took a portfolio of illustrations to publishers in New York City, but only got one response. Susan Hirschman of Harper & Row asked him to illustrate Fred Pflager’s Red Tag Comes Back in 1961. After this successful venture, Arnold Lobel began to both write and illustrate in order to avoid having to share the profits. His first solo picture book, A Zoo for Mister Muster came out in 1962. Its sequel was considered more popular according to Gmuca (1987).
He collaborated with Anita on several picture books including one that became a Caldecott Honor book. Arnold was asked by his editors to “select and illustrate fables written by Aesop.” He had decided not to complete the project when he broke his ankle. With the five weeks it took to heal, Lobel finished Fables as a result of having nothing better to do. He won the Caldecott for the book in 1981.
After spending twenty years writing and illustrating more than 80 children’s books, Arnold Lobel died at the end of 1987 of cardiac arrest.
Biography: Eric Carle
Born to German immigrant parents in 1929, Eric Carle spent his first five years in Syracuse, New York. The family returned to Germany not long after Eric started Kindergarten. Like many youths in Germany, he followed the news of the war as a loyal citizen of Hitler’s Germany, but his love of art led him to visit a teacher who showed him artists banned by Hitler to further inspire his creative spirit. His father was conscripted and later became a prisoner of war in Russia. This left Eric to huddle in the air raid shelters with his mother and then to be shipped to live in the countryside with a foster family until the end of the war.
After the war, Carle enrolled in art school in Germany. He started two years earlier than the minimum age, but was busted down to an apprentice typesetter because of his attitude. He eventually regained his status as a student and earned his degree. At age twenty-three, he decided to return to the United States where a friend got him a job at the New York Times. Unfortunately, he was drafted five months later and sent back to Germany as a mail clerk. He met Dorothea Wohlenberg, an old colleague’s sister, who he married in 1954, a month before being discharged and returning to the United States.
Back in the states, they had two children, Cirsten and Rolf. Six years after their return to New York, Dorothea and Eric separated leaving Eric living alone for ten years except when his children visited. He wasn’t very successful during those ten years, but he got an offer to illustrate Bill Martin, Jr.’s Brown Bear, Brown Bear which was published in 1970. This lead to him writing and illustrating his own books starting with Pancakes, Pancakes not long after he finished with Bill Martin Jr.’s book.
In 1971, he met a special needs teacher named Barbara Morrison who he married in 1973. They moved to Massachusetts a year later where they continue to live now.
Eric Carle is still writing picture books mainly targeting pre-schoolers today. He and his wife Barbara have a foundation called the Eric and Barbara Carle Foundation that is one of the endowers of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art that opened in 2002.
Evolution of Illustration from Lobel to Carle
In the 1960s while illustrating both for his own and other authors’ picture books, Lobel used a style that consisted of “…facial expressions [that] are simply, yet effectively drawn; backgrounds [that] are well detailed; and the color scheme is fairly limited.” (Gmuca, 1987) Lobeloften utilized only pen and ink or a pencil because it was expensive and difficult to use photographic separation of the colors. He only used a full range of colors for Miriam Young's Miss Suzy which was published in 1964 (Gmuca, 1987).Lobel tended to utilize more traditional artistic mediums such as pen, watercolor, and pastel. In many of his works,“Pen-and-ink detailing added depth and dimension to his watercolors, fleshing out characters and background.” (Silvey, 1995, p. 414)
Lobel was creating art at a time when each color had to be drawn and printed separately. This caused him to limit his illustration to one per page and to a smaller set of colors per page. For instance for each illustration “…printed in three colors (black, green, and brown), Lobel had to create three pieces of art.” (McElmeel, 2000, p. 280) To make up for a smaller set of colors per page, Lobel uses a great deal of shading with his pen and ink drawings.
On the other hand, Eric Carle began his work in the late sixties or early seventiesand created a new style of illustration using tissue paper and a camera. Carle “…works in a studio filled with large drawers of colored tissue paper on which he has splashed, painted or dabbed acrylic paints to create special textures and effects. Eric Carle cuts tissue paper into the desired shapes, then pastes them in layers on cardboard. He then takes full-color photographs of the artwork, to be reproduced in a picture book format.”(Silvey, 1995, p.120) This art style is fairly unique even today after over forty years. In fact, in order to make some of his earlier books, including The Very Hungry Caterpillar, more archival quality, Carle has re-illustrated them with higher quality tissue paper customized by his own hands.
In addition to the unique artistic medium, Carle used both sides of the page for a single illustration more often than Lobel. It is actually characteristic of Eric Carle’s work that the picture spans more than a single page. Especially with the medium of tissue paper collages, printing a complete illustration across two pages was not possible at the start of Lobel’s career.
Appeal of Lobel’s Illustrations
Arnold Lobel took great care in his writing, which he found difficult, and his illustrations, which were simpler for him.“In his art, he established mood by setting cartoon animals in pastoral and Victorian surroundings” which allowed him to show human failings without offending people (Silvey, 1995, p. 414).“…the prominent qualities of his [Lobel’s] works--their warmth and humor, social commentary, and basic truth--make ArnoldLobel an important figure in contemporary children's literature.” (Gmuca, 1987) These qualities also allow new generations to enjoy the books because they do not become dated as quickly as some.
Appeal of Carle’s Illustrations
The appeal of Eric Carle’s work lies in the color and “surprises” contained in each book. He paints and cuts his tissue paper by hand in order to create different textures on the page. “‘Nintey-nine percent of the illustration is made of paper,’ says Carle ‘but sometimes I use a crayon or a bit of ink to accent small details.’” (Silvey, 1995, p.120) The surprises consist of semi-transparent flaps covering part of the next picture, holes in the page and other various methods of attracting the child’s attention to the next page. The unique style combined with interesting stories will certainly last for several more generations.
Awards Won by Arnold Lobel
Arnold Lobel illustrated two Caldecott Honor books in the early seventies before being awarded the Caldecott in 1981 for Fables. He wrote the text for the Caldecott Honor book his wife illustrated in 1982. He also received a Newbery Honor medal for Frog and Toad Together in 1973. According to Silvey, Lobel’s work culminated with the University of Southern Mississippi School of Library Science Silver Medallion in 1985 and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal nomination in 1986 both for service and contribution to children’s literature (1995, p.415).
Awards Won by Eric Carle
According to the article in Contemporary Authors Online (2010), Eric Carle has won awards in England, Germany, Japan and the United States for his picture books. His books have won state awards including awards from California, Ohio, Kansas and New York. He has been cited for picture books by the American Library Association as well as earning the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for lifetime contribution to children’s literature in 2002. He has never been awarded the Caldecott or Newberry medal, but he is still illustrating today.
Draw Me a Star
Mister Seahorse
Fables
Giant John
Bibliography
Eric carle. (2010). Contemporary Authors Online, Retrieved February 27, 2010 from Literature Resource Center through UNT’s Electronic Resources
Carle, E. (1992). Draw me a star. New York: Philomel Books.
Carle, E. (2004). Mister seahorse. New York: Philomel Books.
Gmuca, J. (1987). American writers for children since 1960: Poets, illustrators, and nonfiction authors; arnold (stark) lobel. Detroit: Gale Research. Retrieved February 27, 2010 from Literature Resource Center through UNT’s Electronic Resources
Lobel, A. (1964). Giant john. Mexico: HarperCollins Publishers.
Lobel, A. (1980). Fables. New York: Harper and Row Publishers.
McElmeel, S. L. (2000). 100 most popular picture book authors and illustrators: Biographical sketches and bibliographies. Englewood, Colorado: Libraries Unlimited. Retrieved February 27, 2010 from NetLibrary through UNT’s Electronic Resources
Silvey, A. (1995). Children's books and their creators. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Trade and Reference. Retrieved February 27, 2010 from NetLibrary through UNT’s Electronic Resources