Lenski, Lois (1893–1974)

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Lenski, Lois (1893–1974)

American illustrator and author of children's books . Born in Springfield, Ohio, on October 14, 1893; died in Tarpon Springs, Florida, on September 11, 1974; fourth of five children, three girls and two boys, of Richard Charles Lenski (a Lutheran minister) and Marietta (Young) Lenski; Ohio State University, B.S., 1915; additional study at Art Students League, New York, NY, and Westminster School of Art, London, England; married Arthur S. Covey (an artist and mural painter), in 1921 (died 1960); children: Stephen; (stepchildren) Margaret and Laird.

Awards, honors:

Litt.D., Wartburg College (1959); L.H.D., University of North Carolina at Greensboro (1962); Ohioana Medal for Bayou Suzette (1944); John Newbery Medal for most distinguished contribution to literature for American children, for Strawberry Girl (1946); Child Study Association of America Children's Book Award for Judy's Journey (1947); D.Litt., Capital University (1966), Southwestern College (1968); University of Southern Mississippi Special Children's Collection Medallion (1969); Catholic Library Association, Regina Medal (1969), for her lifetime work in the field of children's literature.

Selected writings—for children, all self-illustrated, except as noted: Skipping Village (Stokes, 1927);

Alphabet People (Harper, 1928); A Little Girl of Nineteen Hundred (Stokes, 1928); Two Brothers and Their Animal Friends (Stokes, 1929); The Wonder City: A Picture Book of New York (Coward, 1929); Two Brothers and Their Baby Sister (Stokes, 1930); The Washington Picture Book (Coward, 1930); Spinach Boy (Stokes, 1930); Benny and His Penny (Knopf, 1931); Grandmother Tippytoe (Stokes, 1931); Arabella and Her Aunts (Stokes, 1932); Johnny Goes to the Fair (Minton, Balch, 1932); The Little Family (Doubleday, 1932); Gooseberry Garden (Harper, 1934); The Little Auto (Oxford University Press, 1934, also published as The Baby Car, 1937); Surprise for Mother (Stokes, 1934); Little Baby Ann (Oxford University Press, 1935); Sugarplum House (Harper, 1935); The Easter Rabbit's Parade (Oxford University Press, 1936); Phebe Fairchild: Her Book (Stokes, 1936); A-Going to the Westward (Stokes, 1937); The Little Sail Boat (Oxford University Press, 1937); Bound Girl of Cobble Hill (Lippincott, 1938); The Little Airplane (Oxford University Press, 1938); Oceanborn Mary (Stokes, 1939); Susie Mariar (Oxford University Press, 1939); Blueberry Corners (Stokes, 1940); The Little Train (Oxford University Press, 1940); Animals for Me (Oxford University Press, 1941); Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison (Stokes, 1941); The Little Farm (Oxford University Press, 1942); Bayou Suzette (Stokes, 1943); Davy's Day (Oxford University Press, 1943); Forgetful Tommy (Greenacres Press, 1943); Puritan Adventure (Lippincott, 1944); Spring Is Here (Oxford University Press, 1945); Strawberry Girl (Lippincott, 1946); The Little Fire Engine (Oxford University Press, 1946); Judy's Journey (Lippincott, 1947); A Surprise for Davy (Oxford University Press, 1947); Boom Town Boy (Lippincott, 1948); Mr. and Mrs. Noah (Crowell, 1948); Cotton in My Sack (Lippincott, 1949); Cowboy Small (Oxford University Press, 1949); I Like Winter (Oxford University Press, 1950); Texas Tomboy (Lippincott, 1950); Papa Small (Oxford University Press, 1951); Prairie School (Lippincott, 1951); Peanuts for Billy Ben (Lippincott, 1952); (with Clyde R. Bulla) We Are Thy Children (Crowell, 1952); We Live in the South (Lippincott, 1952); Mama Hattie's Girl (Lippincott, 1953); On a Summer Day (Oxford University Press, 1953); Corn-Farm Boy (Lippincott, 1954); Project Boy (Lippincott, 1954); (with Bulla) Songs of Mr. Small (Oxford University Press, 1954); We Live in the City (Lippincott, 1954); (with Bulla) A Dog Came to School (Oxford University Press, 1955); San Francisco Boy (Lippincott, 1955); Berries in the Scoop (Lippincott, 1956); Big Little Davy (Oxford University Press, 1956); Flood Friday (Lippincott, 1956); (with Bulla) Songs of the City (E.B. Marks, 1956); We Live by the River (Lippincott, 1956); Davy and His Dog (Oxford University Press, 1957); Houseboat Girl (Lippincott, 1957); (with Bulla) Little Sioux Girl (Lippincott, 1958); Coal Camp Girl (Lippincott, 1959); We Live in the Country (Lippincott, 1960); (with Bulla) When I Grow Up (Walck, 1960); Davy Goes Places (Walck, 1961); Policeman Small (Walck, 1962); We Live in the Southwest (Lippincott, 1962); Shoo-Fly Girl (Lippincott, 1963); The Life I Live: Collected Poems (Walck, 1965); We Live in the North (Lippincott, 1965); High Rise Secret (Lippincott, 1966); Debbie and Her Grandma (Walck, 1967); Deer Valley Girl (Lippincott, 1968); Adventures in Understanding (adult, Friends of Florida State University Library, 1968); Lois Lenski's Christmas Stories (Lippincott, 1968); Debbie and Her Family (Walck, 1969); Debbie Herself (Walck, 1969); Debbie and Her Dolls (Walck, 1970); Debbie Goes to Nursery School (Walck, 1970); City Poems (Walck, 1971); Debbie and Her Pets (Walck, 1971); Florida, My Florida: Poems (adult, Florida State University Press, 1971); Journey into Childhood: Autobiography of Lois Lenski (adult, Lippincott, 1972).

Illustrator:

Kenneth Grahame, The Golden Age (John Lane, 1921); Vera B. Birch, The Green-Faced Toad (John Lane, 1921); Grahame, Dream Days (John Lane, 1922); Padraic Colum, The Peep-Show Man (Macmillan, 1924); Veronica S. Hutchinson, ed., Chimney Corner Stories (Putnam, 1925); Henry Drummond, The Monkey Who Would Not Kill (Dodd, 1925); Caroline D. Emerson, A Merry-Go-Round of Modern Tales (Dutton, 1927); May Lamberton Becker, ed., Golden Tales of Our America (Dodd, 1929); Emerson, The Hat-Tub Tale; or, The Shores of the Bay of Fundy (Dutton, 1928); Sing a Song of Sixpence (Harper, 1930); Hugh Lofting, The Twilight of Magic (Stokes, 1930); Watty Piper, ed., Mother Goose Rhymes (Platt, 1931); Piper, ed., Jolly Rhymes of Mother Goose (Platt, 1932); Phil Stong, Edgar, the 7:58 (Farrar, Straus, 1938); Dorothy Thompson , Once on a Christmas (Oxford University Press, 1938); Maud Hart Lovelace, Betsy-Tacy (Crowell, 1940); Cornelia Meigs, Mother Makes Christmas (Grossett, 1940); Lovelace, Betsy-Tacy and Tib (Crowell, 1941); Lovelace, Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill (Crowell, 1942); Lena Barksdale, The First Thanksgiving (Knopf, 1942); Lovelace, Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown (Crowell, 1943); Clara Ingram Judson, They Came from France (Houghton, 1943); Piper, The Little Engine That Could (Platt, 1945); Mary Graham Bonner, The Surprise Place (Ryerson Press, 1945); C.R. Bulla, The Donkey Cart (Crowell, 1946); Alan Chaffee, adaptor, Pinocchio (Random House, 1946).

Born in 1893 in Springfield, Ohio, Lois Lenski grew up in the small town of Anna, Ohio, where her family moved when she was six. She later recalled it as a delightful horse-and-buggy town of a bygone era, the perfect place to spend a childhood. Her mother and father instilled in her a strong work ethic and a respect for knowledge. "My parents had a strong positive attitude toward learning and education," she said. "The most important thing was to learn, work hard and learn, read books, study … there is so much to learn."

As a small child, Lenski adored sewing and aspired to be a dressmaker. By third grade, however, she had discovered her talent for drawing and changed direction. Most of her early work was copied or traced from magazine covers and catalogues; she did not tackle original art until college. Along with her sketching, Lenski began reading voraciously, particularly Dickens, who inspired much of her own later writing. At Ohio State, she majored in education but took her electives in art, including courses in design, lettering,

and drafting. After college, she went to New York, where she attended the Art Students League and concentrated on the creative aspects of her training. Lenski also frequented the free night art class held at the School of Industrial Art, taking an illustration class taught by artist and mural painter Arthur Covey. There, she began illustrating stories and poems of her own choosing. Gradually, she amassed a portfolio—mostly drawings of children and children's activities—and began making the rounds of publishers. Her first professional illustrations were for the Children's Frieze Book, a paperback coloring book of nursery-rhyme figures, with a landscape background that was intended to be cut out and mounted in a continuous frieze. Lenski also continued to work on book ideas, the first manuscript of which she burned in frustration.

In 1921, following a year at London's Westminster School of Art, Lenski returned to New York and married Arthur Covey, who brought to the union his two children, Margaret and Laird, from a previous marriage. (The couple would later have another child, Stephen.) Lenski found marriage and mothering an exhausting job that sapped the strength she had once devoted to her work. She eventually learned to make time for herself, although it meant giving up her beloved gardening and doing the housework at night. Still searching for direction, she began to keep a sketchbook with her at all times, in which she soon recorded words and feelings as well as drawings. Then she kept a notebook along with her sketchbook, and thus an author was born. Her first books were nursery rhymes, verse, and little stories for young children.

From her studio on the 113-acre farm the family purchased in 1929, Lenski turned out a steady stream of books over the next several decades. "Although the years were lonely ones," she wrote, "as I worked alone, having no contacts at all with other writers, yet I was reaching my hand out and touching the lives of hundreds of thousands of children." For a number of years, Lenski focused on the past, creating historical books for older children. During the 1940s, however, she made several trips into the South, which led to a series of regional books about children from Louisiana (Bayou Suzette), Florida (Strawberry Girl), and the North Carolina mountains (Blue Ridge Billy). In 1946, she received the Newbery Medal for Strawberry Girl, and although she was grateful that the book had been singled out for honor, she felt that it represented only a small part of what she was attempting to accomplish with the series. "It is my hope," she explained at the time, "that young people reading my regional books, will share the life of these people as I shared it, and living it vicariously, through the means of a vivid, dramatic, authentic, real-life story, will learn something of tolerance toward people different from themselves."

Lois Lenski was the recipient of numerous awards throughout her career, including the Regina Medal (1969) for her lifetime work in the field of children's literature. Lenski died in 1974, at age 80, in Tarpon Springs, Florida.