Garth Williams

     I think I would have to say that Garth Williams is my favorite illustrator. Like many another child in the last half hundred years, many of my early,favorite books were illustrated by Garth Williams.  He illustrated almost one hundred books for children including some very popular, very well known ones. Mel Gussow, a journalist for the New York Times, said, "with the precision of Durer but with his own sense of innocence and wonderment, Mr. Williams created a world of storybook characters.

     Garth Williams was born in New York City, but grew up, until the age of ten on a New Jersey farm, he said, "as a real Huckleberry Finn, roaming the farm barefoot, watching the farmer milk his cows by hand"(qtd in Gussow). It seems he put the observations of thos days to work in his illustrations. His father was a cartoonist for Punch and some New York publications.  His mother was a landscape painter. Even on the farm everyone at home was always drawing or painting. When Garth was ten he exchanged the farm life for the city life when his family moved to London.

In 1929, at the age of seventeen, Garth began a serious program of art education studying architecture at the Westminster School of Art.  After two years he transferred to the Royal Academy Schools. There he won a scholarship in oil painting and studied mural painting.  He did not give up his contact with Westminster, though, he took night classes there in sculpture. At first he tool the scupture to improve his drawing, but then he was drawn into sculpture for its own sake. (Wooten)

     After graduating he spent one more year at the Royal Academy and then became the director of the Luton School of Art. Then he won the prix de Rome, which afforded him a year at the British School at Rome followed by a study tour of Europe. It was an honor and an opportunity not to be missed. Once back in London, he was sculpting busts. However, this was when the Sec9ond World War broke out in Europe which interrupted both his sculpting and an opportunity to be the Art Director of a woman's magazine.

     Instead, he worked in London as an Ambulance Dispatcher for the British Red Cross for several years.  In 1941, when his back was injured in an air raid, he decided to return to the United States.  He volunteered to serve in the American Civil Service or as a camoflage artist. When these offers were turned down he went to work in a war plant making lenses. Then, in 1943, his worsening health forced him to take a rest, so he began to look for work as a cartoonist.

     The New Yorker found his cartoons "too wild and too European," but they did take some smaller drawings. These drawings caught the attention of Ursula Nordstrom who was a children's book editor for Harper & Row. So, when she recieved E.B. White's manuscript for Stuart Little with a note pinned onto it by the author saying "try Garth Williams" she had already seen his work and was very willing to go with White's suggestion. (Wooten)  When, in 1945, Stuart Little turned out to be such a success, Williams adopted a new career as a children's book illustrator for his own and other peoples works.

     Williams felt that being a children's illustrator carried a responsibility to the reader. He believed that books "given or read, to children can have a profound influence" so he used his illustrations to try to "awaken something of importance...humor, responsibility, respect for others, interest in the world at large"(qtd in Gussow). He spent ten years studying and drawing to perfect his images for the Little House Books. He mat Laura Ingalls Wilder and reseawrchedd the places and the details by traveling throughout the territory covered in the books, from Oklahoma to upper New York State. He explained this by stating that "illustrating books is not just making pictures of the houses, the people and the articles mentioned by the author, the artist has to see everything with the same eyes"(qtd in Wooten). I know that as a child I appreciated that Mr. Williiams illustrations were just as Laura described things.

     Garth Williams was paired with Margaret Wise Brown for some Little Golden Books including Mr. Dog and again for Sailor Dog. In 1952 he collaborated with E.B. White on the tremendously successfull Charlotte's Web. He drew Miss Bianca for Marjory Sharp's The Rescuers and its sequels. He illustrated Natalie Savage Carlson's Newberry Medal Winner, The Family Under the Bridge.  He illustrated The Cricket in Times Square in 1960 and BJ's Harmonica, which was published in 1990.

     Garth Williams also published some books that he both authored and illustrated.  I remember his Baby Animals and Home for a Bunny; I just love his animals. He wrote Baby Farm Animals as well and Benjamin Pink. He wrote a book called Amigo about who makes friends with a prairie dog.  He thinks he is taming it, but the prairie dog knows better. He wrote and illustrated Baby's First Book and he wrote an adorable book called Rabbits' Wedding. I have just read several different adult reviews of Rabbit's Wedding. One reader says she is buying it for the little boy who is going to be the ring bearer in her wedding. He is trying to understand why they want to get married and she felt this book explained it so well. The two rabbits in the story had decided that they want to be together forever and they are having a wedding to celebrate that decision. Each reviewer talked about the precious expressions on the rabbits' faces. However, in 1959, Garth Williams was accused, by a white citizen's council, of promoting racial integration and his book was moved off the regular shelves at the Montgomery Public Library and placed on the reserved shelf because one of the rabbits was black and one was white. Now, some people did point out the sense in making the rabbits different colors so the reader could tell them apart. But, the Montgomery Home News stated that the book was integrationist propaganda obviously aimed at children in their formative years. 

    Garth Williams divided most of his time between the Hacienda he had built in Guanajuato, Mexico and his home in San Antonio, Texas, but still traveled abroad. He had been married four times and had five daughters and one son. His daughter Fiona was the model for Fern in Charlotte's Web.(