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William Steig
When I was a kid my mother had almost all of William Steig's collected cartoon books. Somewhere along the way I let them go, alas. My favorite was The Agony in the Kindergarten, which depicted entirely too familiar situations in children's lives. (there was one of a perplexed, embarrassed, and mostly miserable boy, with the quote along the lines of "give him a toy and he'll be quiet for hours" which I remember whenever I give a baby a thing to mess with and they zone out for a long time with it)
He's the guy younger people remember for Dr. deSoto (mouse dentist), The Amazing Bone, the one about the mouse and the whale -- and Shrek (the book, not the movie). He started out as a New Yorker cartoonist, and his earliest cartoons look sort of derivative of Charles Addams, but it's possible that they were both responding to the same influences. His later New Yorker work, the stuff that got collected into the books I knew, was more reminiscent of Picasso than Addams.
Anyway, if you're in New York, you can trundle along to the Jewish Museum to see an exhibition of his life's work. Or you could buy the new retrospective book. Or you can click over to the online exhibition. Be sure to go all the way to the end and play the five lines game.
He's the guy younger people remember for Dr. deSoto (mouse dentist), The Amazing Bone, the one about the mouse and the whale -- and Shrek (the book, not the movie). He started out as a New Yorker cartoonist, and his earliest cartoons look sort of derivative of Charles Addams, but it's possible that they were both responding to the same influences. His later New Yorker work, the stuff that got collected into the books I knew, was more reminiscent of Picasso than Addams.
Anyway, if you're in New York, you can trundle along to the Jewish Museum to see an exhibition of his life's work. Or you could buy the new retrospective book. Or you can click over to the online exhibition. Be sure to go all the way to the end and play the five lines game.
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