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.
ROGER DUVOISIN (1900 – 1980) was born in Geneva, Switzerland and came to the United States in 1925. Among his more than 40 children’s books, he is best known for those featuring Veronica the conspicuous hippopotamus, and Petunia the silly goose. He received the Caldecott Medal in 1947 for illustrating Alvin Tresselt's White Snow, Bright Snow, and a Caldecott Honor in 1966 for Hide and Seek Fog, also written by Tresselt. In 1968 he was a highly commended runner-up for the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award for children's illustrators.
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LESLIE EVANS graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a degree in printmaking. She has illustrated several books and also prints books and broadsides at her letterpress studio, Sea Dog Press, in Massachusetts.
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