Robert McCloskey

One of Devo’s favorite Authors is writer Robert McCloskey. Mr. McCloskey, who passed in 2003, was declared a living legend in 2000!

Robert McCloskey (1914-2003) wrote and illustrated some of the most honored and enduring children’s books ever published. He grew up in Hamilton, Ohio, and spent time in Boston, New York, and ultimately Maine, where he and his wife raised their two daughters. The first ever two-time Caldecott Medal winner, for Make Way for Ducklings and Time of Wonder, McCloskey was also awarded Caldecott Honors for Blueberries for Sal, One Morning in Maine, and Journey Cake, Ho! by Ruth Sawyer.

Remember This Great Author

You can see some of his best-loved characters immortalized as statues in our very own Boston Public Garden, and Lentil Park in Hamilton, Ohio.

Robert McCloskey has described how he creates his stories. “The book starts with an idea/ideas inside my head. I imagine a lot of pictures. I almost have the book planned before I first put pencil to paper … It usually takes about two years from the first time I write the story until it ends up being a completed book. The first drawing has changed but the text reads almost exactly as it did in my first draft.” Each of his books is a gem, and each accomplishes a different goal, though they are alike in their innocent, homey humor and the best kind of patriotism.

Blueberries for Sal, printed with blue ink, is sweet and cozy. Journey Cake, Ho! (1953) by Ruth Sawyer is appropriately bombastic with its red-brown brush line and blue-green litho crayon showing bold areas of pattern and white space. Time of. Wonder describes a summer in Maine, using paintings with a gentle and joyful color sense and With people depicted in a sketchy yet realistic way that is always kind. And Burt Dow, Deep-Water Man (1963) is brighter and mote caricatured, with pinks, greens, reds, blues, and daring white space.

While he was working on the illustrations for Make Way for Ducklings, in which a family of mallard ducks walks through Boston’s streets to the Public Garden, McCloskey realized he needed live models. He bought four mallard chicks at a market and brought them home to his New York City apartment. When he went to Boston to sketch backgrounds, he brought back six more ducks. “All this sounds like a three-ring circus,” he says, “but it shows that no effort is too great to find out as much as possible about the things you are drawing. It’s a good feeling to be able to put down a line and know that it is right.”

If you have children, or are a child at heart yourself, you must check out this wonderful author.