Donald Crews
Donald Crews (born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1938) is a U.S. writer and illustrator of several well-known children's picture books. He won the Caldecott Honors twice. Common subjects of his include modern technology (especially travel vehicles), and childhood memories. His stories often include few humans.
Biography
Donald Crews was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1938. He had an older brother and two sisters. His mother worked as a seamstress, and his father worked at the railroad, and several other odd jobs. For the summers he would travel down to rural Florida to stay with his grandmother, who he called "Bigmama". The difference between the big city and the farm caused him to create two, massively different types of art later on in his life.
From a young age, his talent for drawing was encouraged by his family and his teachers. When he got into high school, one of his teachers became a mentor to him, and personally made sure that he got into art school.
He graduated from Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City in 1959, and married another graduate, graphic artist Ann Jonas. He was drafted into the army in 1963, and sent to Frankfurt, Germany. Their first daughter, Nina was born in Germany, and their second was born a year later in New York.
While in Germany, he worked on several pieces for his portfolio, including the book We Read: A to Z. After several suggestions from friends, he submitted it, and it was published by Harper & Row (now HarperCollins). The book relied on abstract ideas, rather than the cliches that were usually associated with ABC books. One classic example is the entry for the letter C: "Cc, corner: where the yellow is" is illustrated with a yellow square in the far corner of a red page in the book.
He created several other books over the next few years, but it was 1979's "Freight Train" that won him a Caldecott Honor and the respect of other artists in the field. He won another Caldecott Honor the next year for "Truck". Several other transportation themed books followed, such as "School Bus" (1984), "Flying" (1986), and "Sail Away" (1995). His memories from his summers in Florida first appeared in "Bigmama's" and later in "Shortcut". These stories are vastly different from his previous works, in that they focus on humans, and tell a more linear story.
Donald and his wife currently live in the state of New York in an old, restored farmhouse overlooking the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains.
Bibliography
- We Read: A to Z (1967)
- Ten Black Dots (1968)
- Eclipse: Darkness in Daytime (1973) - Illustrator
- ABC of Ecology (1976)
- Freight Train (1978) Caldecott Honor 1979
- The Talking Stone: An Anthology of Native American Tales and Legends (1979)
- Light (1980)
- Truck (1980) Caldecott Honor 1981
- Carosel (1982)
- Parade (1983)
- Bicycle Race (1985)
- Flying (1986)
- Harbor (1987)
- School Bus (1984)
- Rain (1991) - Illustrator
- Bigmama's (1991)
- Blue Sea (1992) - Illustrator
- Shortcut (1992)
- When This Box is Full (1993)
- How Many Snails: a Counting Book (1994) - Illustrator
- Sail Away (2000)
- More Than One (1996) - Illustrator
- Rockets (1996) - Illustrator
- Night at the Fair (1998)
- Each Orange Had 8 Slices (1998) - Illustrator
- Cloudy Day Sunny Day (1999)
- Tomorrow's Alphabet (1999) - Illustrator
- This is the Sunflower (2000) - Illustrator
- Inside Freight Train (2001)
- How Many Blue Birds Flew Away (2005)
References
- Donald Crews entry at HarperCollins website.
- Donald Crews: the signs and times of an American childhood by George Bodmer from the Spring 1998 issue of the African American Review. (accessed May 31, 2006)