User:Niortega/sandbox JPinkney

Jerry Pinkney (born December 22, 1939) is an American illustrator and writer of children's books. He won the 2010 Caldecott Medal for U.S. picture book illustration for The Lion & the Mouse, a wordless version of the Aesop's fable. He also has five Caldecott Honors. He has five Coretta Scott King Awards, four New York Times Best Illustrated Awards (most recently in 2006 for Little Red Hen), four Gold, and four Silver medals from the Society of Illustrators, and the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award (John Henry, 1994). In 2000, he was given the Virginia Hamilton Literary award from Kent State University and in 2004 the University of Southern Mississippi Medallion for outstanding contributions in the field of children’s literature. In 2016, he received the Coretta Scott King - Virginia Hamilton Award for lifetime achievement.

For his contribution as a children's illustrator, Pinkney was the U.S. nominee in 1998 for the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest international recognition for creators of children's books. In 2012 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Biography

Pinkney was born in the Germantown section of Philadelphia in 1939 and began drawing at the age of four. As a child, he had great difficulty with dyslexia in elementary school. However, his love of and talent for drawing was useful in elevating his self-esteem and gaining the attention of his teachers and classmates. In junior high school his work was noticed by John Liney, who encouraged him to pursue a career as an artist.

He concentrated on commercial art at the Dobbins Vocational School as a teen, and was granted a full scholarship to the Philadelphia Museum College of Art, (now University of the Arts) where he met his wife Gloria. He received the alumni award in 1992. Upon graduation, he held a variety of positions in the field of design and illustration, including one as a greeting card designer. Eventually he founded Kaleidoscope Studios with fellow artists, and two years later he opened his own Jerry Pinkney Studio and focused on illustrating children’s books. The Pinkneys have four children, Troy, Brian, Scott, and Myles. Brian and his wife Andrea Davis Pinkney also both create and collaborate on award winning children's books. The other Pinkneys are involved variously in art therapy, design, and photography. They have six grandchildren who also all write, sing, paint, dance, and draw, making them the third generation in what Gloria calls “the Pinkney tradition.”

He was the winner of the 2010 Caldecott Medal for his acclaimed children’s picture book The Lion and the Mouse (2009) and been the recipient of five Caldecott Honor Medals, five Coretta Scott King Book Awards, four Coretta Scott King Honor Awards, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, and a lifetime achievement award from the Society of Illustrators in New York.

Literary works

At a young age, Pinkney became interested in drawing at a job he had as a newspaper boy and whenever he had a break, he would draw. He had two older brothers who enjoyed drawing comics books and photo magazines and he began to follow in their footsteps. Soon he began to realize that he would rather sit and draw instead of doing other things. While in junior high school Pinkney worked at a newsstand and sketched people as they passed by. This is where Pinkney met cartoonist John Liney who encouraged him to draw and exposed him to making a living from drawing. Pinkney went on and graduated from Murrell Dobbins Vocational School and attended Philadelphia Museum College of Art. He later moved to Boston where he worked at a greeting card company and went on to open Kaleidoscope Studio with two other artists. He eventually opened his own studio, Jerry Pinkney Studio, and later moved to New York. Pinkney has always had an interest in diversity and many of his children’s books celebrate multicultural and African-American themes. Mr. Pinkney still lives in New York and has been an art professor at the University of Delaware, Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and State University of New York at Buffalo. Over the years he has given workshops and been a guest speaker at universities and art schools across the country.

Niortega (talk) 03:29, 10 November 2019 (UTC)