Feodor Rojankovsky The Children’s Books and Other Illustration Art

Description

If you grew up with Little Golden Books, you grew up with Feodor Rojankovsky. Born in Russia in 1891 and trained in Paris, Rojankovsky brought a European richness of color and detail to American children’s books that nobody else could match. His lush, jewel-like illustrations for The Tall Book of Nursery Tales, The Three Bears, and dozens of Golden Books shaped the visual imagination of a generation — the pictures you still see when you close your eyes.

Irving and Polly Allen’s 2014 volume is the first and only book devoted to his career — long overdue for an artist whose work every American child of the mid-twentieth century knew by heart. It celebrates not just the beloved children’s illustrations but the full range of a master draftsman: the advertising art, the personal work, the sheer craft.

Nostalgic and gorgeous. For children’s-book lovers, illustrators, and anyone who remembers those golden spines on the shelf.

If you grew up with Little Golden Books, you grew up with Feodor Rojankovsky — you just didn’t know his name. Irving and Polly Allen’s Feodor Rojankovsky: The Children’s Books and Other Illustration Art, published in 2014, is the first and only book devoted to the career of this master illustrator, and it’s long overdue.

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Born in Russia in 1891 and trained in Paris, Rojankovsky brought a European richness of color and detail to American children’s books that nobody else could match. His lush, jewel-like illustrations for The Tall Book of Nursery Tales, The Three Bears, and dozens of Golden Books defined the visual imagination of a generation — and his work on Frog Went A-Courtin’ earned the Caldecott Medal in 1956.

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But the Allens don’t stop at the children’s books. This tribute brings to light little-known aspects of the artist’s life, career, and work, including his other illustration art beyond the nursery shelf. The result is both a biography and a catalogue of beauty: page after page of Rojankovsky’s unmistakable style, reproduced with the care it deserves.

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For collectors, illustrators, and anyone who still remembers the exact shade of blue in a Golden Book sky, this is an essential volume — a love letter to an artist whose pictures raised half of America.