ISBN: 9780805739688

"There was once a family of seven brothers and sisters. Sadly, their father, an artist frustrated in his ambitions, died when the oldest child, a girl, was only fifteen. His dying wish wa… Mehr…

"There was once a family of seven brothers and sisters. Sadly, their father, an artist frustrated in his ambitions, died when the oldest child, a girl, was only fifteen. His dying wish was that she take up his dream of becoming a successful artist: "What Papa couldnt do," he told her, "Wanda would have to finish." It is hard to say how much her fathers request urged Wanda Gag on to become the accomplished graphic artist, illustrator, and author that she did, but it does appropriately cast her life in the mold of the fairy tales she variously created, translated, and illustrated during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. In this meticulously researched assessment of Gags life in relation to her work for children, Karen Nelson Hoyle traces her transformation from eldest daughter in a poor family from New Ulm, Minnesota, to admired and influential artist and author in the nascent industry of modern childrens book publishing in New York City.Wanda Gag championed fairy tales. While their popularity ebbed and flowed during the thirty-year span of her working life, Gag devoted much of her career as a childrens book author to the imaginative retelling and illustrating of fairy tales. She translated from the German and illustrated three collections of Grimm fairy tales as well as the single volume Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.And her original stories (such as The Funny Thing, about a gentle mountain man trying to appease a strange animal who eats childrens dolls, and Snippy and Snappy, about two wayward mice) share with fairy tales the qualities of being fantastic and unbelievable on the one hand and wise and instructive about the nature of human experience on the other"-- Publisher description-- Publisher description. Media > Book, [PU: Twayne Publishers]<