SOURCE CITATION
"Ellen Raskin." Major Authors and Illustrators for Children and Young Adults, 2nd ed., 8 vols. Gale Group, 2002. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Ellen Raskin was known as an illustrator of children's picture books and as a writer of mystery novels for older children. In both roles, she won critical and popular acclaim. In her picture books, according to Marilyn H. Karrenbrock in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Raskin was "an inveterate puzzlemaker, a trickster, a razzle-dazzle-sleight-of-hand artist." This talent for puzzle-making served Raskin well in her novels, as well, in which she combined wildly preposterous plots with solid mysteries.
Speaking to Jim Roginski in Behind the Covers: Interviews with Authors and Illustrators of Books for Children and Young Adults, Raskin once explained how she wrote a book: "I always write five times as much as I have to and then cut and cut, and make everything readable. The most important thing for me are the first few words, the first line to catch the reader. You can always start over again. I do. I write too much as it is. And, before you ask, I never know the ending. If I do know the ending by the second draft, I don't want to write the book. The ending is my reward for doing that book. So maybe on the fourth draft when I type out the ending I love it! I always have happy endings, too, because I write children's books and I do them specifically for children. And I never make fun of people. I'm very sensitive to that. Perhaps because I was made fun of as a child by other children; or perhaps because I love my characters too much."
Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Raskin had childhood aspirations to become a pianist. The Depression era was financially difficult for Raskin's parents, Sol and Margaret Goldfisch Raskin, and when the family piano was repossessed, she turned to reading, storytelling, and drawing. After graduating from high school, Raskin attended the University of Wisconsin where she studied writing as well as painting, anatomy, and sculpture. Though Raskin's first marriage failed, it produced her daughter, Susan Kuhlman, with whom she remained close throughout her life. Raskin worked as a freelance commercial artist to support herself and Susan, having learned to use a printing press she acquired. After designing 1,000 book jackets, she felt inspired to write her own book, Nothing Ever Happens on My Block, which was published by Atheneum.
Figgs & Phantoms, one of Raskin's most popular mysteries for young readers, showcases her unique creative approach. Focusing on a family of onetime vaudeville performers, the book features characters with names like Mona Lisa Newton, Florence Italy Figg, and Sissie Figg Newton. Truman the Human Pretzel can bend himself into any shape; the brothers Romulus the Walking Encyclopedia and Remus the Talking Adding Machine can answer any question; and Newt Newton is the town's worst used car salesman, trading plain-colored Cadillacs for shiny Edsels. Word play, eccentric twists of plot, and typographical jokes abound. Many of the jokes concern the rare book business (Florence Italy Newton is a bookdealer) and allusions are made to a score of books and authors. As Alice Bach noted in the New York Times Book Review: "Underneath the swagger and intricacies of a mystery salted with book-lined clues the author has written an elegant romance, extended a Victorian bouquet to all bibliophiles."
More importantly, Figgs & Phantoms tells a serious story of a young girl coming to grips with the death of a beloved relative. Young Mona Figg follows her deceased Uncle Flo into the afterworld and in so doing, learns of her own need to live life to the fullest capacity. "Readers may find the book a mystery, or an allegory, or a philosophical story--or possibly a spoof on all three," Ethel L. Heins wrote in Horn Book. A critic for Kirkus Reviews found some flaws in the story: "The zaniness here seems more often forced than inspired. . . . Still a juvenile novel--however unstrung--that takes such farcical liberties with death, grief and readers' expectations is rare enough to rate a hearing, and the Figgs--all mask and gesture though they are--do come up with a few show-stopping lines."
The Newbery Medal-winning The Westing Game "brought a glowing close to a fine career," as Karrenbrock noted. Telling the story of a quirky will left by wealthy industrialist Samuel Westing--who lives in "Westing House"--the book gathers together a group of oddly assorted characters who must, in order to inherit a fortune, play "the Westing game"--a game with apparently different rules for each player. The game may also uncover the identity of Samuel Westing's killer. Disguises, shifting identities, and the confusing nature of the puzzle game provide Turtle Wexler, the book's thirteen-year-old protagonist, with plenty to investigate. "Raskin," wrote Denise M. Wilms in Booklist, "is an arch storyteller here, cagily dropping clues and embellishing her intricate plot with the seriocomic foibles of an eminently eccentric cast."
Raskin once explained in Horn Book how she wrote The Westing Game: "I sat down at the typewriter with no wish of an idea, just the urge to write another children's book. . . . It is 1976, the Bicentennial year. My story will have a historical background; its locale, the place I know best: Milwaukee. . . . Recalling that Amy Kellman's daughter asked for a puzzle-mystery, I decide that the format of my historical treatise will be a puzzle-mystery (whatever that is). I type out the words of 'America the Beautiful' and cut them apart. Meanwhile on television . . . come reports of the death of an infamous millionaire. Anyone who can spell Howard Hughes is forging a will. . . . Now I have Lake Michigan, a jumbled 'America the Beautiful,' the first draft of a very strange will, and a dead millionaire--a fine beginning for a puzzle-mystery."
Critics enjoyed the book's puzzle-mystery. Georgess McHargue, reviewing The Westing Game in the New York Times Book Review, found the book to be trickier than the ordinary mystery novel. "This is not a book for the easily confused, the unsophisticated, or the purist mystery fan," McHague wrote, "but it's great fun for those who enjoy illusion, word play or sleight of hand and don't mind a small rustle of paper in the background." Similarly, Sid Fleischman wrote in the Washington Post Book World that "here the terrain is lush with puns and other word play, with comic shribbery and broadleafed notions. . . . (Raskin) piles mystery upon mystery. . . . Her literary choreography is bouncy, complex and full of surprises."
At the end of her life, Raskin lived in Greenwich Village with her husband, Dennis Flanagan, and her daughter and son-in-law. She died on August 8, 1984. In her Newbery Medal acceptance speech, Raskin clarified that The Westing Game had won the award, not her. "It is the book that is the important thing, not who I am or how I did it, but the book. Not me, the book. . . . I do understand the attempt to introduce books to children through their authors, and in my travels I have seen it done effectively and well. I salute all efforts to encourage reading. But an author is not a performer; meeting an author is not a substitute for reading a book. It is the book that lives, not the author."
PERSONAL INFORMATION
Born March 13, 1928, in Milwaukee, WI; died August 8, 1984, of complications from connective-tissue disease, in New York, NY; daughter of Sol and Margaret (Goldfisch) Raskin; married second husband, Dennis Flanagan (editor of Scientific American), August 1, 1960; children: (first marriage) Susan Metcalf. Avocation: Book collecting, gardening. Education: Attended University of Wisconsin, 1945-49. Memberships: American Institute of Graphic Arts, Asia Society, Authors Guild, Authors League of America.
CAREER
Commercial illustrator and designer, New York, NY, beginning 1950; author and illustrator of children's books, 1966-84. Instructor in illustration at Pratt Institute, 1963, and Syracuse University, 1976; guest lecturer at University of Berkeley, 1969, 1972, and 1977. Exhibitions--Group shows: American Institute of Graphic Arts, 50 Years of Graphic Arts in American show, 1966; Biennale of Illustrations, Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, 1969; Biennale of Applied Graphic Art, Brno, Czechoslovakia, 1972; Contemporary American Illustrators of Children's Books, 1974-75.
