photo:  Elaine S. Martens

Robert McCloskey

Robert McCloskey, who was born and grew up in Hamilton, Ohio says:

I attended public school, and from the time my fingers were long enough to play the scale, I took piano lessons. I started to play the harmonica, the drums, and then the oboe. The musician's life was the life for me - that is, until I became interested in things electrical and mechanical. I collected old electric motors and bits of wire, old clocks, and Mechano sets. I built trains and cranes with remote controls, my family's Christmas trees revolved, lights flashed and buzzers buzzed, fuses blew and sparks flew. The inventor's life was the life for me - that is, until I started making drawings for the high school annual.

In 1932, McCloskey won a scholarship to the Vesper George Art School in Boston. Two years later he got his first important commission - the execution of bas-reliefs for the municipal building in his hometown. The following autumn he moved to New York and entered the National Academy of Design. There he exhibited his work and was given the President's Award. His work was shown at the Tiffany Foundation and at the Society of Independent Artists in Boston as well. He painted for two summers on Cape Cod, during which time, he says:

I never sold an oil painting, only a few water colors at the most modest prices, and financially my art career was a bust. I went to call on an editor of children's books in New York. I came into her office with my folio under my arm and sat on the edge of my chair. She looked at the examples of "great art" that I had brought along (they were woodcuts, fraught with black drama). I don't remember just the words she used to tell me to get wise to myself and to shelve the dragons, Pegasus, and limpid pool business and learn how and what to "art" with. I think we talked mostly of Ohio.

After some work he disliked in the commercial art field, McCloskey went back to Ohio. The editor's words must have sunk in, for he began to draw and paint the things around him in everyday life. The result was Lentil, the story of a boy and his harmonica in a typical Midwestern town. McCloskey returned to New York, where The Viking Press acquired the book. Lentil is partly autobiographical, for McCloskey's early musical training resulted in past mastery of the harmonica.

On the strength of his new paintings, McCloskey got a job in Boston, assisting Francis Scott Bradford in making an enormous mural of famous people of Beacon Hill. Then he got the idea for Make Way For Ducklings.

I had first noticed the ducks when walking through the Boston Public Garden every morning on my way to art school. When I returned to Boston four years later, I noticed the traffic problem of the ducks and heard a few stories about them. The book just sort of developed from there.

So that he could draw the ducks exactly, he bought four squawking mallards and took them home to his apartment. "The ducks had plenty to say - especially in the early morning. I spent the next weeks on my hands and knees, armed with a box of Kleenex and a sketchbook, following the ducks around the studio and observing them in the bathtub." Make Way For Ducklings was awarded the Caldecott Medal, given annually for the most distinguished American picture book for children, and has sold more than 2 million copies in hardcover and paperback.

In 1943, McCloskey's third book, Homer Price, was published by Viking. In six preposterous tales of Homer's adventures, McCloskey looks back with humor and affection at the Midwest of his childhood. Homer Price was enthusiastically received by boys and girls all over America, and a few years later he wrote its sequel. Centerburg Tales carries Homer through more absurd experiences, as well as offering some intriguing tall tales by Grampa Hercules.

During World War II McCloskey was sergeant in the Army. Stationed in Alabama, he was assigned to draw training pictures. He married Peggy Durand, the daughter of the late Ruth Sawyer Durand, a famous storyteller and writer for children, and had two children, Sally and Jane.

After the war the McCloskeys spent a year in Italy, then returned to an island home in Maine. Blueberries for Sal, One Morning In Maine, Time Of Wonder, and Burt Dow grew directly out of their life there.

Though the bear in Blueberries for Sal was imagined, the rest of the story was completely real. McCloskey has pictured his own daughter in Sal, and his late wife, Peggy, is the mother in the story. The kitchen illustrated in the endpapers is their own, although the fascinating old stove is like the one that was in Peggy McCloskey's mother's home in Hancock, Maine.

In One Morning In Maine Sal is growing up and losing here first tooth, and little Jane is the new addition to the family. The McCloskey's English setter, Penny, and their black cat Mozzarella, are portrayed in the story, too. And the village where the characters shop is the actual one to which the McCloskeys rowed for supplies.

Time of Wonder was three years in the making. McCloskey's first picture book in full color shows the timeless, ever-changing beauty of the Maine island that is home. It tells of the family's wonder and delight in daily experiences which never become commonplace. Time of Wonder was awarded the Caldecott Medal in 1958, making McCloskey the first artist to receive this honor twice.

Robert McCloskey has received many other honors during his career, including an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from Miami University at Oxford, Ohio, in 1964, and a Doctor of Letters from Mount Holyoke College in 1967. In 1971, he took part in the "Old Masters Program" at Purdue University. And in 1974 he was awarded the Regina Medal by the Catholic Library Association for continued distinguished contribution to children's literature.

copyright Viking Children's Books and Puffin Books

Click Here for the complete Robert McCloskey Book List.