Happy 80th, Rick Schreiter! (Illustrator: Jay Williams' "The Practical Princess," 1978)

[leno...@yahoo.com]

He was born in Boston.

Here's what I posted in Stump the Bookseller, years ago:

http://www.loganberrybooks.com/solved-d.html

THE DELICIOUS PLUMS OF KING OSCAR THE BAD by Rick Schreiter, NY Harlin Quist (1967). "Geoffrey Hopewell, the story's hero, quietly goes about his business of eating the delicious plums of the king & proving that perseverance truly is the key to success. Magnificent illus in shades of brown, tan peach. Several pictures of Uncle Benjamin traveling in his hot-air balloon, including on the dustjacket cover. A delightful book! Illustrated by Rick Schreiter." I managed to remember the title almost three years ago. As I described it, the king decides to hoard all the plums from a special tree for himself, one boy refuses to accept this, declares he'll ask for some, everyone laughs and says his head will roll, including his enemy Tobias Smudge, and the hero gets taken to the castle by his uncle in a balloon. The humor reminds me of Roald Dahl, somewhat, and even when it doesn't, you know it's post-1960 from scenes like this: "Sometimes he and his friend Kevin would sit on the hill where you could see the castle and Geoffrey would talk about Kings and Plums and Why Things Are the Way They Are." Or: "SUDDENLY, over him fell a huge moist shadow!"

WRITINGS:
*(Juvenile; self-illustrated) The Delicious Plums of King Oscar the Bad , Quist, 1967.
*Also author and illustrator of The Modest Advantures of Barnaby Dob.

Illustrator:
*Richard Arthur Warren Hughes, Gertrude's Child, Harlin Quist, 1966.
*Edgar Allan Poe, The Purloined Letter. The Murders in the Rue Morgue, F. Watts (New York, NY), 1966.
*Eve Merriam, Miss Tibbett's Typewriter, Knopf (New York, NY), 1966.
*Barbara S. Parker, My Street, S.W. Singer Co (Syracuse, NY), 1967.
*Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher, and Four Other Tales: The Black Cat, Ms. Found in a Bottle, Three Sundays in a Week, The Oval Portrait, F. Watts (New York, NY), 1967.
*Edgar Allan Poe, The Pit and the Pendulum, and Five Other Tales, F. Watts (New York, NY), 1967.
*Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, F. Watts (New York, NY), 1967.
*Hans Christian Anderson, Great Claus and Little Claus, Grove, 1968.
*Anderson, What the Good Man Does Is Always Right, Dial, 1968.
*The Derby Ram: A Ballad, Doubleday, 1970.
*Delmar W. Karger, How to Choose a Career, F. Watts (New York), 1978.*
*Jay Williams, The Practical Princess, and Other Liberating Fairy Tales, Parent's Magazine Press (New York, NY), 1978.


Lenona.

[leno...@yahoo.com]

According to familysearch.org, he was living in NYC in 2004, but that's all I could find.

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22rick+schreiter%22&biw=1280&bih=554&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZx5un8_zKAhXGGh4KHTGBCrcQ_AUIBygC#imgrc=_
(illustrations and covers - not all are his)

About "Gertrude's Child" by Richard Hughes:

"Gertrude is a wooden doll, complete with hard head, and a fierce determination to be free of the little girl who owns and abuses her. And so Gertrude runs away, stomping her wooden feet down the 'hard black road' with a vengeance. When she meets a strange old man on the road, her important adventures begin." "Gertrude the doll has had it with her owner who keeps abusing her. As she stomps her way down a hard black road, she meets an old man who is the owner of a strange store in which children are for sale to dolls!"

My Street by Barbara S. Parker

"Told in verse as a boy gives the reader a tour of his city street, the people who live there & things that happen."


Miss Tibbett's Typewriter by Eve Merriam

"Miss Tibbett and her bird enjoy their time together while she types. Soon neighbors and businesses are asking her to type things for them but the typewriter has a problem. One of the letters doesn't work so the things she are typing aren't right."

The Little Man by Erich Kastner, translated from the German by James Kirkup

"Maxie Pichelsteiner is only two inches tall, but longs to be a circus performer. When he teams up with the magician Hokus Von Pokus, their fame spreads around the world, but then Maxie gets into big trouble when he's kidnapped by dastardly villains. By the author of Emil and the Detectives."

The First Book of Ethics by Algernon D. Black

"Ethics, the study of how people treat other, is a hunt for truth as every person becomes a judge of right and wrong. It is also the way to become a free person, since it helps one know what the choices are in life. 'The First Book of Ethics' is about how people have tried to find the answers, and how each person may find them."

A Club Against Keats by Margaret Hodges

"5 girls form a club to produce CINDERELLA & name it for the neighborhood boy who is spying on them, Keats Connelly."

The Derby Ram

"The Derby Ram is a traditional tall tale English folk song that tells the story of a ram of gargantuan proportions and the difficulties involved in butchering, tanning, and otherwise processing its carcass. Here, Rick Schreiter has focused on the story teller and the less-than-welcome response to the story by the town folk."


Lenona.

[leno...@yahoo.com]

On Tuesday, February 16, 2016 at 1:51:03 PM UTC-5, leno...@yahoo.com wrote:
> According to familysearch.org, he was living in NYC in 2004, but that's all I could find.
>

Well, now I know not to trust Familysearch too much.

I searched on Schreiter's name plus "Boston" and stumbled on this, sadly.

https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/66517000/

May 12, 1994

"Grace A. Schreiter Memorial services will be Tues-; day for Grace A. Schreiter, a Dominican Oaks resident who died ; Saturday at her daughter's Aptos home of complications from pneumonia. She was 90. Born in Cambridge, Mass., Mrs. Schreiter graduated from Boston University's College of Business in 1926. She was an English teacher in Norton, Mass., from 1926-1929. After her marriage In New York, she and her husband lived for two years in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, before returning to the Boston area. She lived in Arlington, Mass. from 1938 until she moved to Santa Cruz in 1993 to be near her daughter. She lived in Dominican Oaks and enjoyed various activities there. She Is survived by her daughter, Sandra S. Rice of Aptos; her granddaughter, Erin Rice of Aptos; and several nieces and nephews. Her husband of 60 years, Ehrich E.M. Schreiter, died in 1990; and her son, Rick Schreiter, died in 1987."


Yes, the parents' names are a match. Schreiter would likely have been 51 when he died.

Also:

https://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2012/03/?m=0

(a 2012 interview by Ariel S. Winter with Etienne Delessert, the illustrator of Eugène Ionesco's children's books)


Excerpts:

"...As detailed as I try to be in my research, I knew almost nothing about the books' original publisher Harlin Quist, or that Ionesco and Mr. Delessert had a falling out with him so severe that they abandoned plans to complete the last two of the four books that had originally been contracted. I invited Mr. Delessert to clear up any inaccuracies in my posts..."


Q: "What were your feelings about your experience with Quist? What were Ionesco's?"

DELESSERT: "Great at the beginning. Quist was a charmer. For the first two or three years: the small group of artists was quite close. For instance, Eleonore Schmid, Rick Schreiter and I were meeting each week to exchange our experiences and dream about conquering the children's book field.

"Eleonore and I were also working for magazines and some advertising, so we were able to keep going without the income of successful books, but Rick, already quite unstable, was completely broken by the Quist gang. He was one of the really great new original talents, but soon disappeared to become a homeless. Thanks Harlin and Ruy Vidal. Neither Ionesco or myself ever forgave them.
Like Boris Vian wrote: 'J'irai cracher sur vos tombes!'"

(end)

Btw, under one entry for Schreiter, it says:

"Harvard University, student, 1953-54; Rhode Island School of Design, B.F.A., 1958."


Lenona.

[leno...@yahoo.com]

More books he illustrated, including ones by Andersen, Poe, Ted Hughes, & Erich Kastner.

http://www.worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n50002799/