R.I.P. Elizabeth Orton Jones, Caldecott winner, 94
leno...@yahoo.com
PETERBOROUGH, N.H. (AP) - Children's book illustrator and author
Elizabeth Orton Jones died Tuesday at the Monadnock Community Hospital.
She was 94.
She lived in Mason.
Jones wrote "Twig" and illustrated "Little Red Riding Hood," published
by Little Golden Books in 1948.
In 1945, she won the Caldecott Medal, awarded for outstanding
children's literature.
She was an active supporter of the Crotched Mountain rehabilitation
center in Greenfield.
(end)
She won the Caldecott Medal for her artwork in Rachel Field's Prayer
for a Child.
http://www.ortakales.com/Illustrators/Jones.html
(biography, bibliography)
http://images.google.com/images?q=%22elizabeth+orton+jones%22&hl=en&btnG=Search+Images
(photos, book covers)
Lenona.
leno...@yahoo.com
there, too!
http://www.pickityplace.com/
Lenona.
Boston Globe obit:
Elizabeth Orton Jones, an author and illustrator whose life was as
colorful as the children's storybooks she created, died Tuesday, Maly
10, 2005, at Monadnock Community Hospital in Peterborough, New
Hampshire.
"She was a real small-town artist person. Everybody loved her," said
her neighbor Eugene Roe of Greenville, New Hampshire.
Miss Jones, known as "Twig," wrote or illustrated dozens of children's
books. She is perhaps best known for her artwork for the Little Golden
Book version of "Little Red Riding Hood," which was published from 1948
to 1979.
Her home in the forest in Mason, New Hampshire, which she called Misty
Meadow and bought on a whim while on a business trip in 1945, served as
the model for Little Red Riding Hood's home.
"I pretended she was in my home," Miss Jones said in a story published
in the Globe in 1993. "She was standing right over in there in front of
that fireplace."
Though born in Illinois, she became closely associated with her adopted
hometown. She wrote a history of Mason and compiled a biography of
Samuel Wilson, a local character who was the model for star-spangled
Uncle Sam. On the opening page of "Little Red Riding Hood" there is a
sign that reads, "To Mason, New Hampshire."
The 215-year-old cottage at Pickity Place, a Mason restaurant, was the
model for the grandmother's home. Miss Jones often did interviews at
the restaurant, which is still shaded by the white ash tree featured in
the book and is now a shrine of sorts, with framed reproductions of her
book and assorted Red Riding Hood souvenirs.
Miss Jones worked incessantly. When her first home became too cluttered
with artwork, she bought another house, also in Mason, which she called
Rock-A-Bye. She received admirers in Rock-A-Bye, where they were asked
to sign a guestbook, though she often went home to Misty Meadow to
sleep.
The daughter of a violinist and a pianist, she was born in Highland
Park, Illnois. As a child she gave school lessons to imaginary friends
in her bed using the headboard as a chalk board.
She graduated from the University of Chicago and studied at the Art
Institute of Chicago and ɣole de Beaux Arts in France.
Her first book, "Ragman of Paris and His Ragamuffins," published in
1937, was inspired by her trip to France.
Another Book, "Twig," published in 1942, earned her the nickname that
followed her through life.
Though she dedicated her life to writing for children, she never had
children. "I think I would ruin them," she said in 1993. "I'd either
work all the time and they'd run wild, or I'd teach them so much they'd
hate me."
People were always coming up to her and asking if she was "the Mrs.
Jones" who did "Little Red Riding Hood."
"She never hesitated to correct them," said another friend, Donald
Russell of Greenville. "She would say, 'No, not Mrs. I was never
married. I'm Miss Jones."
In 1945 she won the Caldecott Medal for a book she illustrated, "Prayer
for a Child." In her acceptance speech, she said she was reluctant to
call herself an artist. "I think of being an artist as an achievement I
may work toward my whole life and even then not arrive," she said.
"Though, I would like to be able to say, right out loud to myself on
the morning of my 99th birthday, 'Old girl, you are an artist.'"