Paul Galdone

Paul Galdone (1907–1986) was a Hungarian-born American author and illustrator best known for his children’s picture-book retellings of classic fairy tales and folktales. Born in Budapest, he emigrated to the United States as a teenager in the 1920s and studied art at the Art Students League and the New York School of Industrial Design before working in the art department of a major publishing house, including Doubleday. Over the course of his career he illustrated hundreds of children’s books, many of them his own adaptations of traditional stories, and became noted for lively, humorous, action-filled artwork.

Galdone’s work includes many enduring nursery and folk tale retellings, among them The Three Bears and The Three Billy Goats Gruff, which appear in his popular Paul Galdone Nursery Classics/Paul Galdone Classics series. He also illustrated Eve Titus’s Anatole and Anatole and the Cat, both of which received Caldecott Honors, and worked on series such as Basil of Baker Street. In recognition of his contribution to children’s literature, he received the Kerlan Award posthumously in 1996.