Gyo Fujikawa (November 3, 1908 – November 26, 1998) was an American illustrator and children's book writer. A prolific creator of more than 50 books for children, her work is regularly in reprint and has been translated into 17 languages and published in 22 countries. Her most popular books, Babies and Baby Animals, have sold over 1.7 million copies in the U.S.Publishers Weekly URL accessed 23 April 2007. Fujikawa is recognized for being the earliest mainstream illustrator of picture books to include children of many races in her work, before it became common to do so.Gyo Fujikawa, a Children's Illustrator Forging the Way, Dr. Andrea Wyman. Versed, Sept. 2005. URL accessed 21 July 2009.Penguin Group Diversity. URL accessed 23 April 2007.Ask Art:Gyo Fujikawa. URL accessed 23 April 2007.
Biography Gyo Fujikawa was born in Berkeley, California, to Japanese parents, Hikozō and Yūko Fujikawa (藤川幽子). The masculine name Gyo (pronounced "gyoh") is after a Chinese emperor her father admired.
Gyo Fujikawa moved to Los Angeles to attend Chouinard Art Institute in 1926, having received a scholarship, and befriended Japanese dancer Michio Ito and many fellow Nisei writers and artists. After graduating and spending a year in Japan, she was on the Chouinard faculty from 1933-1937."Gyo Fujikawa." St. James Guide to Children's Writers, 5th ed. (St. James Press, 1999). She worked for Walt Disney Productions in California as a promotional artist on Fantasia. In mid-1941 the studio relocated Fujikawa to New York; therefore, she avoided the forced internment of West Coast Japanese and Japanese Americans during World War II. Her family, however, spent the war in the internment camp at Rohwer, Arkansas.
According to Fujikawa, Walt Disney personally comforted her during this time. As she recalled:
From 1943 to 1951, she worked for the pharmaceutical advertising agency William Douglas McAdams.
In 1951, Fujikawa became a full-time freelancer, producing more than 80 front-cover illustrations for Children's Digest and other periodicals, and about five years later was approached by juvenile editor Debra Dorfman at Grosset & Dunlap to illustrate Robert Louis Stevenson's "A Child's Garden of Verses". This was her first published children's book, in 1957. Babies, the first book both written and illustrated by Fujikawa in 1963, was also one of the earliest children's books to use multiracial characters, a consistent feature across her body of work.
After the success of A Child's Garden of Verses, Fujikawa became one of the first artists to contract for royalty payments, refusing to perform work unless her publisher agreed to pay her royalties.
Fujikawa's books have been reprinted for mass-market and published worldwide. Her most popular books, Babies, Baby Animals, A to Z Picture Book and Oh!, What A Busy Day!, represent a happy, detailed version of childhood. Her paintings of children are recognizable for round happy faces, rosy cheeks and simple dot eyes. Discussing her respect for her audience, she said: In illustrating for children, what I relish most is trying to satisfy the constant question in the back of my mind--will this picture capture a child's imagination? What can I do to enhance it further? Does it help to tell a story? I am far from being successful (whatever that means), but I am ever so grateful to small readers who find 'something' in any book of mine.
Fujikawa died on November 26, 1998, in New York Hospital. Although she was engaged at 19, she never married.
Other work Fujikawa's notable commercial clients included Upjohn Company vitamins, Beech-Nut baby food and Eskimo Pie, creating the round-faced child icon for the ice cream treat. She created six stamps for the United States Post Office, including the 1997 32¢ "yellow rose" self-adhesive stamp and the United States-Japan Treaty ratification centenary stamp of 1960. Fujikawa was a life member of the Society of Illustrators.
In popular culture Playwright Lloyd Suh scripted a one-act play imagining a dialogue between Walt Disney and Fujikawa titled Disney and Fujikawa. It was performed at the Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York City in 2017 and was reviewed by the New York Times.
In 2019 Penguin Random House published a book written by Kyo Maclear and illustrated by Julie Morstad about Fujikawa called It Began With a Page. This book was one of New York Public Library's Best Books for Kids 2019, the Globe and Mail's 100 Books That Shaped 2019, the Chicago Public Library's Chicago Best of the Best Books of 2019 under Best Informational Books for Younger Readers and one of Kirkus Reviews' Best of 2019 Picture Books (Biography). It was also featured on Today's "24 beautiful kids' books that reflect the Asian American experience.”
Bibliography
Written and illustrated by Gyo Fujikawa
Babies, 1963 Baby Animals, 1963 A to Z Picture Book, 1974 Let's Eat, 1975 Let's Play, 1975 Puppies, Pussycats, and Other Friends, 1975 Sleepy Time, 1975 Oh, What a Busy Day!, 1976 Babies of the Wild, 1977 Betty Bear's Birthday, 1977 Can You Count? New York, 1977 Our Best Friends, 1977 Millie's Secret, 1978 Let's Grow A Garden, 1978 My Favorite Thing, 1978 Surprise! Surprise!, 1978 Come Follow Me to the Secret World of Elves and Fairies and Gnomes and Trolls, 1979 Jenny Learns A Lesson, 1980 Welcome Is a Wonderful Word, 1980 Come Out and Play, 1981 Dreamland, 1981 Fairyland, 1981 Faraway Friends, 1981 The Flyaway Kite, 1981 Good Morning!, 1981 Here I Am, 1981 Jenny and Jupie, 1981 The Magic Show, 1981 Make-Believe, 1981 My Animal Friends, 1981 One, Two, Three, A Counting Book, 1981 Shags Has a Dream, 1981 Mother Goose, 1981 A Tiny Word Book, 1981 Year In, Year Out, 1981 Jenny and Jupie to the Rescue, 1982 Fraidy Cat, 1982 Me Too! New York, 1982 Sam's All-Wrong Day, 1982 Shags Finds a Kitten, 1983 That's Not Fair, 1983 Are You My Friend Today?, 1988 Sunny Books: Four Favorite Tales, 1989 Ten Little Babies, 1989 See What I Can Be!, 1990 Good Night, Sleep Tight, Shh, 1990 Be Careful, Brian and Other Tales, 1996
Illustrated by Gyo Fujikawa
I Like Automobiles, 1931, by Dorothy Walter Baruch A Child's Garden of Verses, 1957, by Robert Louis Stevenson The Night Before Christmas, 1961, by Clement C. Moore Mother Goose, 1968 A Child's Book of Poems, 1969 Fairy Tales and Fables, 1970 Poems for Children, 1980 Baby Mother Goose, 1989 Poems for Small Friends, 1989
References