Marie Hall Ets (December 16, 1895 – January 17, 1984) was an American writer and illustrator who is best known for children's picture books.
Life Marie Hall Ets was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on December 16, 1895. She attended Lawrence College. In 1918, she journeyed to Chicago where she became a social worker at the Chicago Commons, a settlement house on the northwest side of the city.
In 1960 Ets won the annual Caldecott Medal for her illustrations of Nine Days to Christmas, for which she also co-authored text with Aurora Labastida. Five of her titles were runners-up for that honor between 1945 and 1966, a record surpassed only by Maurice Sendak."Caldecott Medal & Honor Books, 1938–Present". Association for Library Service to Children. American Library Association. Retrieved 2013-05-05.
Just Me and In the Forest are both Caldecott Honor books. The black-and-white charcoal illustrations in Just Me "almost take on the appearance of woodcuts" and are similar in style to the illustrations in In the Forest. Constantine Georgiou comments in Children and Their Literature that Ets' "picture stories and easy-to-read books" (along with those of Maurice Sendak) "are filled with endearing and quaint human touches, putting them at precisely the right angle to life in early childhood." Play With Me, says Georgiou, is "a tender little tale, delicately illustrated in fragile pastels that echo the quiet mood of the story."Georgiou (1969), p. 100.
In 1970, her transcription of the autobiographical stories of Ines Cassettari, whom she met in Chicago in the years following World War I, was published as Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant.
Ets died in Inverness, Florida, on January 17, 1984.
Selected works
Mister Penny (Viking Press, 1935) The Story of a Baby, 1939 In the Forest, 1944 My Dog Rinty, 1946, by Ellen Terry Oley, the Sea monster, 1947 Little Old Automobile, 1948 Mr. T. W. Anthony Woo: the story of a cat and a dog and a mouse, 1951 Beasts and Nonsense, 1952 Another Day, 1953 Play With Me, 1955 Mister Penny's Race Horse, 1956 Cow's Party, 1958 Nine Days to Christmas (Viking, 1959), text with Aurora Labastida Mister Penny's Circus, 1961 Gilberto and the Wind, 1963 Automobiles for Mice, 1964 Just Me, 1965 Bad Boy, Good Boy, 1967 Talking Without Words: I Can. Can You?, 1968 Rosa, the Life of an Italian Immigrant (transcribed by Ets), 1970; second edition, 1999, University of Wisconsin Press Elephant in a Well, 1972 Jay Bird, 1974
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