David Wisniewski Dies at 49

Author and illustrator David Wisniewski, whose picture book The Golem (Clarion, 1996) won the 1997 Caldecott Medal, died September 11 in a hospice near his home in Monrovia, MD, a suburb of Washington, DC. According to a HarperCollins spokesperson, he died of an unknown illness. He was 49.

Wisniewski began as a circus clown and then became a shadow puppeteer. It was in the fine shaping and cutting of the shadow puppets that he mastered the paper-cutting technique used in his powerful collage illustrations. His first book, The Warrior and the Wise Man (Lothrop, 1989), told the story of a Japanese emperor with twin sons, and The Golem told the legend of a man made of clay and brought to life by a Prague rabbi to save the city's Jewish community.

Wisniewski's more recent titles addressed an assortment of themes, such as The Secret Knowledge of Grownups (Lothrop, 1998), about the real reasons for the rules adults force children to follow. Tough Cookie (Lothrop, 1999) is a Raymond Chandler-style detective story with cookies as the characters. His most recent title is Halloweenies (HarperCollins, 2002), a humorous spoof of classic horror-movie monsters.

"Having had a career as a puppeteer and translating that skill so effectively to the book format gives his work a dimension beyond a typical picture book," says Caroline Ward, coordinator of children's services for the Ferguson Library in Stamford, CT. "He put theater into his books. His particular brand of theater added a tremendous depth to his work. It's a great loss."