SOURCE CITATION
"Arnold (Stark) Lobel." Major Authors and Illustrators for Children and Young Adults, 2nd ed., 8 vols. Gale Group, 2002. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007.
Photograph provided by HarperCollins.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Best known for his "Frog and Toad" stories, Arnold Lobel illustrated and/or wrote nearly one hundred books for children. During a career that spanned twenty-six years, Lobel captured the hearts of children in the United States and abroad with his universal stories and endearing artwork. Critics have compared him to such enduring greats as Beatrix Potter and A. A. Milne. "Lobel was a serious, hard-working artist who loved children and animals," eulogized Hilary Stout in a New York Times obituary.
An only child of divorced parents, Lobel grew up in his maternal grandparents' home in Schenectady, New York. In the Third Book of Junior Authors, he described the house as "large and ramshackle. . . . The wide front lawn sloped down to a pleasant tree-lined street and, for the most part, my very early childhood was quite happy." Then illnesses put the young boy in the hospital for extended stays. This made him feel alienated from other children, especially when he watched them play outside from a hospital window. But when he was able to attend school, Lobel's natural talents helped him gain acceptance among his classmates. "I'd tell stories extemporaneously and children loved them," he recalled for The Lion and the Unicorn interviewers Roni Natov and Geraldine DeLuca. "When I started, I didn't know how they were going to end but they just came out of me," he later added. "And I would draw pictures to go with them."
Fortunately, during high school Lobel's health improved considerably; it was at this time that he realized he wanted to be a professional artist. After graduation he attended Pratt Institute of Art in New York City, where he focused on illustration. While at Pratt, Lobel met Anita Kempler when they both were involved in production of a play. Soon after graduation in 1955, the couple were married. "It is a prevailing truism that Pratt students marry Pratt students, and I was no exception," Lobel observed in the Third Book of Junior Authors. Anita Lobel eventually became a writer and illustrator as well, although the two had different styles and did not collaborate on a book until later in their careers. Beginning in 1977, Lobel wrote How the Rooster Saved the Day, A Treeful of Pigs, On Market Street, and The Rose in My Garden for his wife to illustrate.
To help pay the bills, Lobel worked at various advertising agencies after graduating from college. His heart wasn't in commercial work, however, so in 1961 he launched a career in free-lance illustrating. Lobel first sold drawings for three activity books by Sol Scharfstein; then in 1961 his first picture book illustrations saw print in Red Tag Comes Back. Many of Lobel's first assignments were for the "I Can Read" series at Harper and Row. Using pencil, pen and ink, or just a few colors, he produced artwork for books spanning such diverse subjects as poetry, fiction, fantasy, science, and history.
Lobel had discovered his place in life. While creating artwork for other authors in the 1960s, he also wrote and illustrated his own stories. The first of these was the humorous A Zoo for Mister Muster, followed by A Holiday for Mister Muster. The illustrations for both books were done in pen and ink, with orange added to the first and yellow to the second. In 1963 Lobel used a folktale style for his Prince Bertran the Bad. Through various experiences, the mischevious Prince Bertran discovers how to become good. Lucille, published in 1964, is the story of a horse who wants to be a lady. After a disastrous tea party involving broken crockery, the mare realizes it is far better to simply be herself.
Beginning in the l970s, Lobel's work received a long list of awards, including a Caldecott Honor Book award for Frog and Toad Are Friends and a Newbery Honor Book award for Frog and Toad Together. "Somehow in the writing of the manuscript for Frog and Toad I was, for the first time, able to write about myself. Frog and Toad are really two aspects of myself," reflected Lobel in New Books for Young Readers. Readers from all backgrounds can relate to the characters because they belong to no specific time period, age or ethnic group, country, or social stratum. In the New York Times Book Review, Eliot Fremont-Smith wrote that Frog and Toad All Year "is elementary--rather vague, gentle, undemanding, supportive (Pooh and Piglet come to mind, though their adventures are more complex and passionate)--but in its very modesty it is both appealing and very comforting to young children." From 1980 until his death, Lobel came out with fourteen new books, including Uncle Elephant, The Book of Pigericks: Pig Limericks, and Whiskers and Rhymes. His last one, The Turnaround Wind, published posthumously in 1988, "will knock your socks off," exclaimed James Marshall in Horn Book.
Lobel's books generally target four- to eight-year-olds, although they are enjoyed by readers of all ages. Like Frog and Toad, Lobel's other protagonists are mostly humanized creatures great and small. When asked by Lee Bennett Hopkins in Books Are by People which of his works he favored, Lobel explained, "My favorite book is always the next one, the one I haven't done yet." And he confided in the Milwaukee Journal that "I write the books for myself," adding: "Sometimes they come out of the truth I find in myself." Discussing when children should be introduced to reading, Lobel said: "It's never too early. At the age of 2 they will be enthralled--even if you read to them from the telephone book." He went on to note that "Unlike TV, books are something where a child can find a gentleness that he can't find anywhere else. A book is a self-contained, private thing, something on which a child can contemplate."
Lobel not only wrote and illustrated books, he also knew how to select the typeface and paper to be used in the printing process. Several writers raved about Lobel's humble brilliance and virtuosity. As Robert D. Hale put it in Horn Book, "There isn't much he hasn't done in the creation of children's books." This sentiment was echoed by former Greenwillow publisher Susan Hirschman in the same publication: "There was nothing he couldn't do, with style and wit and originality and panache--and without a fuss." And Marshall pointed out this outstanding characteristic: "Unlike some artists who have produced the same book for the past thirty years, Arnold created books that are always fresh and new and are never repeat performances." Writing specifically about Lobel's artistic abilities, Marshall stated: "Arnold had one of the most exuberant and original palettes in books...He is, without a doubt, one of the very finest watercolorists who ever lived."
PERSONAL INFORMATION
Born May 22, 1933, in Los Angeles, CA; died of cardiac arrest, December 4, 1987, in New York, NY; son of Joseph and Lucille (Stark) Lobel; married Anita Kempler (a writer and illustrator of children's books), April, 1955; children: Adrianne, Adam. Education: Pratt Institute, B.F.A., 1955.
CAREER
Writer and illustrator of children's books.
