GORDON LAITE (1925 - 1978)
was born in New York City to Polish immigrants.
Sometime during his early childhood Charles and Blanche Fisher
Laite became his foster parents.
Charles Laite was
a Broadway actor who appeared in four silent films. Charles died in
1937 of a heart attack at the stage door of the Cleveland
House Theatre in Cleveland, Ohio, where he was an understudy for the play
"In a Nutshell."
Blanche was the
illustrator of one of the most popular children's book's ever sold, The
Real Mother Goose by Rand McNally. Over 3,600,000 copies of this book have been sold since its first printing in 1916.
Gordon Laite attended Beloit College in Wisconsin and the Chicago Art Institute. He had a prolific career as an artist and illustrator of children's books.
Laite married his wife Jeanne in 1948 and the couple had three children. His later years were spent in Gallup, New Mexico until his death in 1978 at the age of 52.
RICHARD SCARRY (1919 - 1994) is one of the world’s best-loved children’s
authors EVER! Generations of children worldwide - including this blogger! - have grown up
spending hours poring over his books filled with all the colorful
details of their daily lives. No other illustrator has shown such a
lively interest in the words and concepts of early childhood. (Whenever
he was asked how old he was, Scarry would always put up one hand and
laugh, saying, “five!”)
Born in 1919, Richard Scarry was raised
and educated in Boston, Massachusetts. After five years of drawing maps
and designing graphics for the US Army, he moved to New York to pursue a
career in commercial art. But after showing his portfolio to one of the
original editors at Golden Books, he found the perfect home for his
work. The assignments first given to Scarry tended to be Little Golden
Books that featured popular characters of the day, such as Winky Dink,
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and Smokey the Bear. Eventually, Scarry
created his own original characters, such as Lowly Worm and Huckle Cat.
But first came Nicholas, a young rabbit clad in red overalls, for the
now-iconic classic I Am a Bunny.
In his extraordinary
career, Richard Scarry illustrated more than 150 books, many of which
have never been out of print. His books have sold over 100 million
copies around the world and are currently published in more than twenty
languages. Richard Scarry Jr., also an illustrator, carries on his
father’s work today under the name of Huck Scarry. Richard Scarry passed
away at his home in Gstaad, Switzerland in 1994. He was posthumously
awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Illustrators in
2012.
Learn more about the illustrator.
TIBOR GERGELY (1900 – 1978) was a Hungarian American artist best known for his illustration of popular children's picture books. Born in Budapest in 1900, he studied art briefly in Vienna before immigrating to the United States in 1939, where he settled in New York City. Largely a self-taught artist, he also contributed several covers of The New Yorker, mostly during the 1940s. Among the most popular children's books Gergely illustrated are The Happy Man and His Dump Truck, Busy Day Busy People, The Little Red Caboose, The Fire Engine Book, Tootle, Five Little Firemen, Five Hundred Animals from A to Z, and Scuffy the Tugboat. Many of his better known books were published by Little Golden Books. His best work is collected in The Great Big Book of Bedtime Stories. He became a U.S. citizen in 1948. As of 2001, Tootle was the all-time third best-selling hardcover children's book in English, and Scuffy the Tugboat was the eighth all-time bestseller.
Learn more about the illustrator.
