Leonard Weisgard

Leonard Joseph Weisgard (December 13, 1916 – January 14, 2000) was an American writer and illustrator of more than 200 children's books. He is known best for his collaborations with writer Margaret Wise Brown. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and spent most of his childhood in England.

Weisgard studied art at the Pratt Institute in New York City. His first book, Suki the Siamese Pussy, was published in 1937 and his first collaboration with Brown was two years later, The Noisy Books. He won the 1948 Caldecott Medal for U.S. picture book illustration, recognizing The Little Island, written by Brown. They collaborated again on The Important Book, published by Harper & Brothers in 1949. Writer Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was a Newbery Medal runner-up in 1956 for The Secret River, which Weisgard illustrated.

Personal life

Weisgard married Phyllis Monnot in 1951 and moved to Copenhagen, Denmark, with her and their three children in 1969.

Later years

He died on January 14, 2000, in Denmark.

Lewis Carroll

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (/ˈtʃɑːrlz ˈlʌtwɪdʒ ˈdɒdsən/; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll (/ˈkærəl/), was an English writer, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon, and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, which includes the poem Jabberwocky, and the poem The Hunting of the Snark, all examples of the genre of literary nonsense. He is noted for his facility at word play, logic, and fantasy. There are societies in many parts of the world dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works and the investigation of his life.

Antecedents

Dodgson's family was predominantly northern English, with Irish connections, conservative and High Church Anglican. Most of Dodgson's male ancestors were army officers or Church of England clergy. His great-grandfather, also named Charles Dodgson, had risen through the ranks of the church to become the Bishop of Elphin. His paternal grandfather, another Charles, had been an army captain, killed in action in Ireland in 1803 when his two sons were hardly more than babies. The older of these sons – yet another Charles Dodgson – was Carroll's father. He went to Westminster School and then to Christ Church, Oxford. He reverted to the other family tradition and took holy orders. He was mathematically gifted and won a double first degree, which could have been the prelude to a brilliant academic career. Instead, he married his first cousin Frances Jane Lutwidge in 1827 and became a country parson.