William (Sherman) Pene du Bois

1916-1993

Nationality: American Place of Birth: Nutley, NJ Personal Information: Family: Surname is pronounced "pen-due-bwah"; Born May 9, 1916, in Nutley, NJ; Died February 5, 1993, after suffering a stroke, in Nice, France; son of Guy (a painter and art critic) and Florence (a children's clothes designer; maiden name, Sherman) Pene du Bois; married Jane Bouche, 1943 (marriage ended); married Willa Kim (a theatrical designer), March 26, 1955. Education: Attended Lycee Hoche, Versailles, France, 1924-28, Lycee de Nice, Nice, France, 1928-29, and Morristown School, 1930-34. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Protestant. Avocational Interests: Tennis, raising dogs. Military/Wartime Service: U.S. Army, 1941-45, served in coast artillery in Bermuda; correspondent for Yank.

Illustrator of over twenty-five additional books, including Richard Plant and Oskar Seidlin, S.O.S. Geneva, Viking, 1939; Charles McKinley, Harriet, Viking, 1946; Rumer Godden, The Mousewife, Viking, 1951; Claire Huchet Bishop, Twenty and Ten, Viking, 1952; Evelyn Ames, My Brother Bird, Dodd, Mead, 1954; Edward Lear, The Owl and the Pussycat, Doubleday, 1961; Rebecca, Caudill, A Certain Small Shepherd, Holt, 1965; Roald Dahl, The Magic Finger, Harper, 1966; Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Topsy-Turvy Emperor of China, Harper, 1971; Charlotte Shapiro Zolotow, My Grandson Lew, Harper, 1974; Norma Farber, Where's Gomer?, Dutton, 1974; Mark Strand, The Plane Things, C. N. Potter, 1982; Zolotow, William's Doll, Harper, 1985; The Night Book, Crown, 1985; May Garelick, Just My Size, HarperCollins, 1990. Also illustrator of Castles and Dragons, edited by Child Study Association, 1958, and The Poison Belt, by Arthur Conan Doyle, 1964.

Pene du Bois's manuscripts are housed in the May Massee Collection at Emporia State University, Kansas.

"Sidelights"

William Pene du Bois was a widely recognized author and illustrator of children's books. Throughout a prolific career that spanned five decades, he illustrated more than fifty books--half of those his own--and garnered several distinguished awards, including the Newbery Medal and two Caldecott Honor Awards. As evidenced by such popular works as The Twenty-one Balloons and his "Otto" books, he was best known for artfully combining adventure, fantasy, and humor. His characters are essentially good, though frequently eccentric and absurd, and even his villains are more foolish than evil. His illustrations, too, were acclaimed for their detail, inventiveness, and technical skill.

Pene du Bois was born to a family already well established in the art world. His father, Guy Pene du Bois, was a distinguished American painter and art critic, and his mother, Florence, was a children's clothes designer. As early as the 1700s, his forebears had distinguished themselves as painters, stage designers, and architects, many of whom were known throughout the United States and Europe.

As a child, Pene du Bois developed a strong interest in the circus. After he moved to France with his family at the age of eight, he spent so much time at one French circus that he could name each performer and act by heart. Much of his time, too, was spent poring over the books of Jules Verne, who wrote colorful science-fiction and adventure novels. Pene du Bois, however, admitted that he was fascinated more by the illustrations in Verne's books--especially those depicting mechanical devices--than by the actual texts. "As a child I hardly read at all, although I loved to look at books," he later said in his Newbery Award acceptance speech reprinted in Horn Book. "I was the sort of fellow who just looks at the pictures. I try to keep such impatient children in mind in making my books."

During his childhood, Pene du Bois learned much about drawing from his father. Yet he also credited the strict discipline of the Lycee Hoche, one of two French schools he attended, for instilling neatness, clarity, and order in his work habits and artistic style. At the school, for example, meticulousness was of paramount importance to Pene du Bois's arithmetic teacher, who refused any work that failed to meet his strict standards for neatness. "I remember doing a magnificent page of arithmetic," Pene du Bois recalled, "in which I neglected to rule one short line under a subtraction of two one-digit figures.... `What have we here,' [my teacher] said, `an artist? Monsieur [Pene] du Bois is drawing free hand.' He neatly tore my work in four pieces." Later, Pene du Bois would employ a similar strategy in his own work--if he felt any of his drawings was not his best, he tore it up.

At age fourteen, Pene du Bois moved with his family back to the United States, and two years later, in 1933, he announced his decision to enter Carnegie Technical School of Architecture. "I was awarded a scholarship to that institution," he explained "but to my amazement, I sold a children's book I wrote and illustrated as a divertissement during vacation. It was The Great Geppy." So instead of attending Carnegie, Pene du Bois embarked on a new career: writing and illustrating books for children. By age nineteen, he completed and saw the publication of his first book, and by the time he entered the armed forces at age twenty-five, he had written and illustrated five more books for children.

Pene du Bois continued to write and illustrate children's books at a steady, though unhurried, pace. He worked on only one drawing per day, and he often wrote the text for his books only after the illustrations were complete. In this way, his story ideas were almost fully developed by the time he actually composed on paper.

Among Pene du Bois's earliest self-illustrated works isGiant Otto, first in a comical series that features a gigantic hound and his owner, Duke. In Giant, Otto joins the French Foreign Legion and successfully wards off an Arab invasion by wagging his tail to create a huge sandstorm. In Otto at Sea he bravely saves all the passengers of a sinking ship. Other "Otto" books include Otto in Texas, where Otto unmasks oil thieves, andOtto and the Magic Potatoes, where Otto and Duke discover that an evil baron is actually a humanitarian who wants to feed the hungry. The "Otto" stories were well received by reviewers, who especially praised Pene du Bois's imaginative and vivid illustrations. A reviewer for Virginia Kirkus Service wrote that Pene du Bois's "boldly colored illustrations vividly illustrate the madcap continental atmosphere in which the unusual but always dignified Otto performs."

Pene du Bois drew upon his love of the circus for his 1940 book,Great Geppy. The title character is a horse that is hired to solve a robbery at a circus. To investigate the crime, Geppy poses as a variety of circus entertainers, including a freak, a tightrope walker, and a lion tamer. In the end he discovers that there never was a theft; the culprit broke into the safe to donate money to the struggling circus, not steal any. For his success Geppy is honored as a hero and is even appointed the circus's newest star--he gives an extraordinary performance when shot from a cannon.

During World War II, Pene du Bois served in the U.S. Army, but he didn't stop writing and illustrating. In addition to working as a correspondent for Yank, he also edited the camp newspaper, painted portraits, and illustrated strategic maps. And, according to Susan Garness in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, he also may have been working on his next children's book, for two years after his discharge, he completed what is perhaps his best known work,The Twenty-one Balloons.

Winner of the 1948 Newbery Medal, The Twenty-one Balloons relates the fantastic adventures of Professor William Waterman Sherman, a retired mathematics teacher who embarks on a cross-Pacific journey in a hot-air balloon. Unfortunately his balloon is punctured, and he crashes on the island of Krakatoa, whose inhabitants live in luxury atop a volcano filled with diamonds. One day, though, the volcano erupts, and everyone escapes on a platform held aloft by twenty-one balloons. Equipped with parachutes, the Krakatoans later jump to safety, but the professor is left to crash-land in the ocean. Eventually, he is rescued by a freighter and welcomed home as a hero.

In Books: A Guide for the Middle Grades, John Gillespie and Diane Lembo remarked that The Twenty-one Balloons is "a mixture of fantasy and science that demonstrated Pene du Bois's "skill in combining literary style and creative imagination." Gillespie and Lembo went on to comment that "reminiscent of H. G. Well's science fiction tales, it will appeal to many beginning science fiction fans. In addition, [Pene] du Bois's superb artistic craftsmanship conveys both the imaginative and scientific quality of his story in numerous and detailed drawings." And in another review of The Twenty-one Balloons, a critic for theJunior Bookshelf wrote: numerous illustrations are not only most beautiful in themselves but also exact and illuminating interpretations of the story. The production is worthy of the quality of this remarkable book, in which fantasy, invention and high adventure are so happily blended."

During the 1950s Pene du Bois won the Caldecott Honor Award for each of two self-illustrated books, Bear Party and Lion. The former relates the tale of a masquerade party given by "real" teddy bears. Told with little text, the story relies on Pene du Bois's colorful and elaborate drawings, which depict bears dressed in costumes ranging from clowns, to angels, to bullfighters, to knights. The latter story is an original fable that reveals how the Artist Foreman created the Lion at the beginning of the universe. With detailed illustrations, Pene du Bois fills the factory--where angels invent the animals--with charts of ears, tails, and tongues. He also depicts the angels' drawing instruments, which include white paper and gold brushes. The book is "graceful and charming," judged Nancy Ekholm Burkert in Horn Book, and added that "the delight of Lion in both art and text lies in its celebration of the creation of uniqueness and in the uniqueness of creation."

Throughout Pene du Bois's career, he also illustrated numerous works of other notable children's authors, including Verne, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Charlotte Shapiro Zolotow. He especially enjoyed the challenge of illustrating books entirely different from his own, such as Patricia Gordon's Witch of Scrapfaggot Green, which features an evil sorceress. Undoubtedly, though, many of the books he illustrated contained characters and elements familiar to him. In Charles McKinley's Harriet, for example, he drew the title character, a horse, much like his own Geppy. And in Leslie Greener's Moon Ahead, a science fiction story, he indulged his love for precisely drawn illustrations of machinery--a love first inspired by Verne's books. Moreover, fussy characters greatly resembling those in his Twenty-one Balloons appeared in Daisy Ashford's Young Visitors.

Pene du Bois continued to add to his already lengthy list of children's books. And he also continued to attract widespread recognition for his humorous fantasies, amusing characters, and detailed drawings. But he wished to dispel the myth that creating books for children is a simple task. In a lecture at the New York Public Library, as quoted in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, he addressed the point: "I have the feeling that when I'm asked `How did you ever think of such a crazy idea?' the person who asked the question felt that the book was thought of in a moment, illustrated in a week, and printed in a day. There is a widespread feeling that doing children's books is a divertissement or a hobby, never a full- time job, and that it's quick and easy. I don't want to discourage people who want to dash off a children's book, but I would like to slow them down a bit."

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