Uri Shulevitz, the prolific author and illustrator whose books delighted children for decades, has died at 89, Macmillan Children's Publishing Group announced in a news release.
Shulevitz, a native of Warsaw, Poland, survived the Nazi bombing of his city when he was 4; he and his family fled for the Soviet Union and later, France and Israel. He was educated at the Institute for Israeli Art in Tel Aviv, and made his literary debut in 1963 with The Moon in My Room, about a boy who creates an imaginary world in his room with his teddy bear.
In 1968, he illustrated The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship, Arthur Ransome’s adaptation of the folk tale “The Flying Ship.” Shulevitz won the Caldecott Medal for the book. He would go on to receive three Caldecott Honors, for the books The Treasure, Snow, and How I Learned Geography, all of which he also wrote.
In 2020, he published Chance: Escape From the Holocaust, a graphic memoir about his childhood and adolescence in Europe. In an interview with Kirkus, Shulevitz said of the book, “I also wanted to examine—for myself and for the reader—the sequence of events and what took place. And although some of the memories were painful, I didn’t want to avoid them. And I’m glad that I wrote about them.”
Michael di Capua, who edited Shulevitz’s first books, said in a statement, “Uri had an innate, untaught sense for effectively shaping the narrative of a picture book, a gift that many well-known illustrators wish they shared. And his distinctive visual style, as unique as his fingerprints, is unmistakable. His books will last.”
Shulevitz’s next book, The Sky Was My Blanket: A Young Man’s Journey Across Wartime Europe, is slated for publication on Aug. 19.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
