Illustrator William Steig Dies at 95

Although Steig didn't begin writing and illustrating children's picture books until he was 60, he created more than 25 titles, including C D B! (1968), Amos and Boris (1971), The Amazing Bone (1976), and Doctor De Soto (1982, all Farrar). He was also famous for the more than 1,600 cartoons he drew for the New Yorker magazine.

"Having been familiar with Steig's cartoons in the New Yorker, it was a bit of a shock for me to see him as a writer and illustrator of children's books when I began working in libraries," recalls Jeanette Larson, youth services manager for the Austin (TX) Public Library. "Now, it's hard to imagine children's literature without him. [His] books provide a bridge between children's books and the adult world, as we share the humor of situations that are both mundane and outrageous."

Barbara Genco, head of materials selection at the Brooklyn Public Library and former president of the Association for Library Service to Children, says kids' books have never been the same since Sylvester and the Magic Pebble and Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are (Harper & Row, 1963).

In a New York Times editorial on October 11, Steig's widow Jeanne described her husband as a champion worrier. "He called himself a depressive, but he was the most cheerful man alive," she wrote. "I said from the start that I'd love him as long as he kept me laughing, and he never failed. Even his worries amused me: When we get there we won't be able to park. There will be no table. You could not stop Bill from worrying; he took too much pleasure from it."

Steig was born November 14, 1907, in the Bronx. He drew cartoons for his high school newspaper, attended the National Academy of Design, and had the first of his New Yorker cartoons published in 1930.