When he works with color, as in his picture books with Brown and Jack Prelutsky, he opts for deep colors to add warmth to his lines.Infoplease Staff The Story Behind Hollywood's Big Mouse by Holly HartmanĪfter more than half a century as a quietly beloved literary figure, Stuart Little has become a cash cow of a mouse-the grinning, computer-generated star of a $90 million movie and the subject of seven new books, as well as a line of products that includes plush toys, games, and a mouse-shaped backpack. Garth Williams excels at textures, particularly animal fur and the tall waving grasses in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books.

When he uses pencil, as in Russell Hoban’s Bedtime for Frances (1960) and Laura Ingalls Wilder s Little House in the Big Woods (1932) and the other books in this series, his lines are fewer and softer, yet still recognizable for the caring, understated facial expressions. When he works with pen and ink, Williams combines a classical style of flowing lines and crosshatching with humorous, loving depictions of his characters, as in the novels he illustrated for White, George Selden, and Margery Sharp.

This title began a collaboration with Brown that would eventually include eleven books. His first children’s book illustrations appeared in Stuart Little in 1945, followed in 1946 by Margaret Wise Brown’s Little Fur Family, which was bound in rabbit fur. In 1943 he began looking for Work as an illustrator and cartoonist and was eventually accepted by The New Yorker. While driving an ambulance during World War II, he was wounded in the spine and went to the United States, where he continued to work for the war effort. He applied for and received the British Prix de Rome, allowing him to study art in Italy, France, and Germany, where he met and married the first of his four wives. Williams’s affinity for weight and texture in his illustrations seems to come from his sculpting. He attended the Westminster School of Art and went on to win a painting scholarship to the Royal College of Art there he discovered sculpture. His father was a cartoonist and bis mother a landscape painter, and Williams has said, “Everybody in my house was either painting or drawing, so I thought there was nothing else to do in life but make pictures.”

From there the family moved to Ontario and, in 1922, to England. Garth Williams was born in New York City, but his family soon moved to a farm in New Jersey his earliest memories of this time include riding with the farmer on his tractor. White’s Stuart Little (1945) and Charlotte’s Web (1952), illustrated more than eighty books and wrote seven picture books, including The Rabbit’s Wedding (1958), unintentionally controversial because of its depiction of the wedding of a black rabbit and a white rabbit. Garth Williams, best known as the illustrator of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” books and E. American illustrator and author, 1912-1996.

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