William Steig Biography

William Steig – American author and illustrator, 1907-2003

William Steig has been deservedly praised for both his writing and his illustrating, receiving the Caldecott Medal for Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (1969), a Calde­cott honor for The Amazing Bone (1976), and two Newbery honors for Abel s Island (1976) and Doctor De Soto (1982).

William Steig grew up in the Bronx, where his father was a house painter and his mother a seamstress. He started painting at an early age. Among his influences, Steig credits the Grimms’ fairy tales, Charlie Chaplin’s movies, the Katzenjammer Kids, the opera Hansel and Gretel and Pinocchio. He has said, “If I’d had it my way, I’d have been a professional athlete, a sailor, a beachcomber, or some other form of hobo, a painter, a gardener, a novelist, a banjo-player, a traveler, anything but a rich man.”

During the Depression, when his father could not find work, it was up to young Steig to support his family, which he did quite successfully by selling cartoons to the New Yorker and other magazines. He has published several volumes of these drawings, which are of­ten enigmatic, thought-provoking doodles. Steig attended City College in New York for two years, then spent four years at the National Academy of Design.

In the 1940s he began carving in wood, and his sculptures are in several museum collections. He came to children’s books late, when he was sixty, at the suggestion of Robert Kraus, a New Yorker colleague, and found im­mediate success. Since then he has written and illustrated more than twenty books and provided illustrations for eight more. He married his fourth wife in 1969 and has three children.

Describing his creative process, Steig has said, “I usually start a picture book by selecting a main character — donkey, mouse, or perhaps human. Then I decide what his or her occupa­tion is and take it from there. I make a very rough dummy and afterward try to get the spontaneous quality of the rough drawings…. I like drawing, but not illustrating, because basi­cally I’m a doodler. My best work is spontaneous and unconscious, as someone once pointed out, calling me a ‘sublime doodler’ — the best com­pliment I ever had.” Once an idea is accepted by his editor, Steig will work quickly, taking about a week to write the text and a month to illustrate.

William Steig’s illustrations are instantly recognizable, as he has used a consistent style involving a fairly thick, sketchy black line with watercolor added loosely, often including stripes, polka dots, and flowered patterns in his characters’ clothing and in the backgrounds. His prose has a forthright style, and he has used precise, often surprising language, which some adults fear is too chal­lenging but which children love. He is serious about his characters and their situations.

This is real life, even if it involves a mouse dentist or a donkey with a magic pebble, and the humor comes from the believable situations and char­acteristics the reader recognizes from his or her own experiences. In even his most fantastical stories, the problems his characters face are uni­versal and their solutions are never didactic. Steig has said, “I feel this way: I have a position — a point of view. But I don’t have to think about it to express it. I can write about anything and my point of view will come out. So when I am at work my conscious intention is to tell a story to the reader. All this other stuff takes place automatically.”

William Steig’s books provide serious situations fac­tually illustrated with familiar settings and char­acters with intensely real emotions. His humor, alternately silly and poignant, and his integrity regarding his characters and his readers should ensure his popularity for many years.

William Steig in his own words …

L.R.

Source: Children’s Books and their Creators, Anita Silvey.

William Steig Works