A short life of the author
Robert John McCloskey (15 September 1914 – 30 June 2003) was an American author and illustrator whose picture books — characterised by meticulous draughtsmanship, gentle humour, and a deep love of the specific places he depicted — are among the enduring classics of American children’s literature. He won the Caldecott Medal twice (only five illustrators have achieved this distinction), and his book Make Way for Ducklings has been in continuous print since 1941 and has sold millions of copies.
Early Life and Training
McCloskey was born in Hamilton, Ohio, a small town that would provide the setting for his Homer Price stories. He showed artistic talent from an early age and attended the Vesper George School of Art in Boston and the National Academy of Design in New York, where he studied painting and sculpture.
It was in Boston that McCloskey found the subject of his first and most famous book. Walking through the Boston Public Garden, he became fascinated by the mallard ducks that nested on the lagoon and began sketching them — eventually keeping live ducklings in his apartment bathtub to study their movements.
Make Way for Ducklings (1941)
McCloskey’s debut picture book tells the story of Mr. and Mrs. Mallard, who search for a safe place to raise their ducklings in Boston, eventually settling on the island in the Public Garden after a policeman named Michael stops traffic on Beacon Street to let the duck family cross.
The book’s illustrations — large-format, sepia-toned lithographs depicting Boston’s streets, parks, and architecture with architectural precision — are as much a portrait of a city as a story about ducks. McCloskey drew every cobblestone, every building facade, every leaf with the attention of an artist who believed that children deserve pictures as carefully made as any gallery painting.
Make Way for Ducklings won the Caldecott Medal in 1942 and has become one of the defining American picture books. A bronze sculpture of Mrs. Mallard and her eight ducklings, installed in the Boston Public Garden in 1987 by Nancy Schön, is now one of Boston’s most visited landmarks.
The Maine Books
In the late 1940s, McCloskey and his wife moved to an island off the coast of Maine, and the landscape and rhythms of coastal New England became the setting for his finest work. Blueberries for Sal (1948) parallels a human mother and daughter picking blueberries on one side of a hill with a bear mother and cub eating berries on the other — the two pairs inadvertently switch children in a gentle comedy of mutual confusion. The book is a Caldecott Honor winner and one of the most perfectly conceived picture books ever made.
One Morning in Maine (1952), another Caldecott Honor book, depicts a day in the life of McCloskey’s daughter Sal as she loses her first tooth and accompanies her father to the mainland in a motorboat. Time of Wonder (1957) — painted in full-colour watercolour rather than McCloskey’s usual pen-and-ink — captures a summer on a Maine island, from the first warmth of June through a hurricane to the melancholy beauty of departure in September. It won McCloskey his second Caldecott Medal.
Burt Dow, Deep-Water Man (1963), about a retired fisherman and his leaky boat, was McCloskey’s last picture book and his most exuberant — a tall tale told with affection and illustrated with some of his most colourful work.
Homer Price (1943) and Centerburg Tales (1951)
McCloskey’s chapter books for older children — Homer Price and Centerburg Tales — are collections of loosely connected stories set in a small Ohio town. The stories are comic, inventive, and suffused with nostalgia for small-town American life. The most famous chapter, “The Doughnuts,” about a doughnut machine that can’t be turned off, is a classic of American comic fiction for children.
Legacy
McCloskey published relatively few books — he was a perfectionist who worked slowly and who refused to publish anything that did not meet his standards. But the books he did produce are permanent fixtures of American childhood. Make Way for Ducklings and Blueberries for Sal are among the most frequently given and most fondly remembered picture books in the United States, and their gentle observation of the natural world and of family life continues to resonate with each new generation of readers.
Collecting McCloskey
Make Way for Ducklings (1941, Viking) in first edition with dust jacket is a major collectible of American children’s literature, valued at $2,000–$10,000. Blueberries for Sal (1948, Viking) first editions are also highly sought. McCloskey’s books were well-printed and have held up well physically. Signed copies are uncommon and command significant premiums.