'Make Way for Ducklings' author dead
Robert
McCloskey won two Caldecotts, based books on life
Wednesday, July 2, 2003 Posted: 2:37 PM EDT (1837 GMT)
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Robert McCloskey
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PORTLAND, Maine
(AP) -- Robert McCloskey,
author and illustrator of the beloved children's books "Make Way for
Ducklings," "Homer Price" and "Blueberries for Sal,"
has died at 88.
McCloskey
died Monday at a home on Deer Isle after a long illness, said Katrina
Weidknecht, director of publicity at Penguin Books for Young Readers.
His
books, often inspired by his family's own experiences, focused on small-town
life, the family's island home in Maine, and Boston, the
setting for his 1941 book "Make Way for
Ducklings," about a mother duck who leads her eight ducklings through the
busy streets of the big city.
In
all, he wrote and illustrated eight children's picture books.
"It
is just sort of an accident that I write books. I really think up stories in
pictures and just fill in between the pictures with a sentence or a paragraph
or a few pages of words," he once said.
McCloskey,
a native of Hamilton, Ohio, had come
to Boston in 1932 to study art when he
watched some ducklings waddling through traffic.
"Make Way for
Ducklings" was translated into 13 languages, sold more than 2 million
copies and won the Caldecott Medal for the best American children's picture
book. A bronze sculpture of the mother duck and her eight ducklings is a
popular tourist attraction in Boston.
