The Wizard of Weston Woods

The small studio (named for the woods surrounding Schindel's Weston, CT, home) has produced more than 300 films and 450 filmstrips, videos, and audiocassettes, sold to more than 50,000 schools and libraries nationwide. The adaptations initially featured Schindel's pioneering "iconographic" filmmaking technique, in which a picture book illustration glides in front of a motion picture camera, giving the still illustration cinematic life. But his greatest contribution to the world of children's literature runs deeper than that. Schindel was the first to see the possibilities of making quality films truly faithful to the timeless storybooks on which they are based.

"In some cases, he took the book to another dimension," says Caroline Ward, children's services coordinator at the Ferguson Library in Stamford, CT, and former president of the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA). "Where the Wild Things Are is a masterpiece," she says, and so are Weston Woods's versions of Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson and Changes, Changes by Pat Hutchins.

Strolling through Schindel's home on a A bright spring afternoon, it's obvious that somebody who truly loves kids' books lives here. A big, old stuffed replica of Corduroy rests in an easy chair. A 40-year-old framed doughnut hangs on the wall, paying homage to Homer Price, McCloskey's doughnut-devouring hero. There are also scattered photos of a much younger Schindel in the company of friends and collaborators, including Steig, Sendak, Ezra Jack Keats, and McCloskey. Looking at their boyish smiling faces, it's hard to believe that Weston Woods is now preparing for its gala Silver Anniversary celebration in June.

Strangely enough, Schindel's satisfying career grew out of a serious illness. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business in 1939, the New Jersey native had planned to follow his father into the retail business, until a doctor diagnosed tuberculosis and advised a less stressful career. Be an artist, the physician prescribed.

Schindel thought of turning his love of photography and filmmaking into a vocation. He earned a master's degree from Columbia University's Teachers College in 1949, taking a range of audiovisual courses. Around this time, Schindel also made a profound connection with his young children by reading to them aloud. Suddenly, everything started coming together, and Schindel knew he wanted to marry his filmmaking pursuits with children's books. "I thought, if I can give back to other adults who have had this kind of expression and emotional outlet taken away from them, this would only be the beginning," he remembers.

After a stint working on films for Teaching Films (which soon went bankrupt), Schindel started his own company, Key Productions, before heading off to work for the United States Information Service in Turkey for two years. Upon his return in 1953, Schindel produced the first Weston Woods picture-book film, Andy and the Lion, based on a book by James Henry Daugherty.

But there were rocks in the road. Schindel tried to persuade the television networks to broadcast his films, but at first there were no takers. He took out a bank loan of $1,500 to supplement the $34,000 he had already borrowed from his family for start-up expenses. Then, one of Schindel's connections arranged a meeting with Lew Wasserman, chairman and CEO of MCA, the parent company of Universal Studios. The entertainment mogul declared Schindel's films an artistic triumph, but an economic fiasco. "I thought that I should stop this nonsense, but then what would I do?" Schindel recalls. "I knew this is what I wanted to do with my life, so I went back to work." Finally, Schindel caught a break: his films began appearing, in 1956, on the popular children's television show Captain Kangaroo, reaching four million viewers.

Schindel freely admits to his initial ignorance about children's literature. It was a librarian from the New York Public Library who sent him home with some of the most treasured books Weston Woods would ever film: McCloskey's 1942 Caldecott Medal–winning Make Way for Ducklings and Virginia Lee Burton's Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. He also turned to School Library Journal and The Horn Book for guidance. But it was Schindel's own children's recommendations that mattered most. "They really encouraged me to select those books and do something with them," he says.

Schindel also made a pivotal decision early on to bypass the commercial film distribution route. To him, children would have a greater chance to view his creations if they were distributed to libraries and schools. Copies of films were sent to 40 libraries nationwide with film collections. "They started to keep everything we made," he says.

Schindel's ingenuity has been matched by his generosity. Having seen the financial and creative strains placed on authors and artists who were forced to accept one-time payment rights for their works, Schindel soon came up with a better formula—children's book creators would receive royalties and become integral in the filmmaking process. "It opened the door to us and people saw that we were not only treating the book with respect but the artists, too," Schindel says.

That reputation has certainly helped attract artists of all kinds. Five years ago, Academy Award–winner Meryl Streep narrated Henkes's Chrysanthemum. "She did her homework by practicing reading the book to her daughter," says Paul Gagne, Weston Woods's director of production and a four-time winner of ALA's Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Children's Video. "She then breezed in and out, doing a perfect job in 45 minutes"—an inordinately concise session.

Each step in Weston Woods's painstaking filmmaking process involves careful consideration, from selecting the most appropriate filmmaking technique to choosing narrators with just the right voices. Every effort is made to collaborate with the books' original illustrators. When David Small was asked to draw additional images for an animated film version of his 2001 Caldecott Medal winner, So You Want to Be President? by Judith St. George, he made black-and-white brush-and-ink drawings and faxed them to the animators. The studio's reproductions were very impressive, says Small. For Jerry Pinkney's 2000 Caldecott Honor Book, The Ugly Duckling , Schindel used the iconographic style to bring the book to life because of the difficulty in redrawing the 4,000 extremely detailed images necessary for an animated film.

That fastidious approach to kids' flicks has not gone unnoticed. In 1994, Columbia University presented Schindel with its Distinguished Alumni Award; the citation read, to the only graduate "who never earned a dime as a librarian or as a classroom teacher" but nonetheless became "a teacher to millions." And ALSC honored him three years ago with a Lifetime Achievement Award for reaching children "from the hills of Appalachia to the suburbs of Tokyo with books, films, stories, and songs."

IT WAS NO SURPRISE WHEN SCHOLASTIC ACQUIRED Weston Woods in 1996. In fact, Schindel never offered his business to anyone else. He and Scholastic Chairman Richard Robinson go way back. Years ago, Robinson would visit Schindel, sometimes borrowing videos for his children. "I told Dick, 'I chose you because I think you understand what I'm doing,'" Schindel says. For both men, it wasn't just a business deal but trusting someone to perpetuate a legacy.

Has Weston Woods changed now that the world's largest publisher of children's books owns it?

The studio's original mission—to inspire children's love of reading by turning superb children's picture books into films—remains the same, says Gagne, who joined Weston Woods right out of college, 25 years ago. "We are trying to connect one story with one child," he adds. "If the child wants to go check the book out of the library, then I feel we've succeeded in what we are trying to do."

These days, the affable Schindel acts as a consultant to Weston Woods. He's also focusing his attention on the Weston Woods Institute, a nonprofit agency he founded in 1983 to promote literacy, teacher training, and educational, cultural, and artistic activities. "We're teaching preschool teachers about emergent literacy," Schindel says excitedly. "It's about sharing wonderful stories with children, just like Weston Woods was doing from the beginning. For me, it's always been about the books."