The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/…

Publisher's Weekly: https://www.publishersweekly.…

Quoted from Publisher's Weekly:

Caldecott Medal–winning author-illustrator Ed Young, best known for his reinterpretations of folktales and legends from his native China, and evocative illustrations rendered in a range of mediums, died September 29 in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. He was 91.

Ed Tse-chun Young was born November 28, 1931 in the coal-mining town of Tianjin, China. He grew up with four siblings in Shanghai where their father was dean of engineering at St. John’s University. As a boy, Young was fond of making up stories and was already exhibiting a talent for drawing.

Young immigrated to the U.S. on a student visa in 1951 at age 19, and attended City College in San Francisco and the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, initially studying architecture before switching to art. In 1957, he graduated from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and soon after, he moved to New York City to launch a career in advertising, and also began additional art study at Pratt Institute. In his free time, he enjoyed sketching animals at the Central Park Zoo and at other sites around the city.

When Young sought a more expressive direction for his art outside of advertising, a friend suggested he pursue children’s book illustration. Legendary Harper & Row editor Ursula Nordstrom encouraged Young on this new career path and offered him a contract to illustrate The Mean Mouse and Other Stories by Janice M. Udry, which was published in 1962. That debut led to many other books, written by a variety of authors.

Young received the first of his two Caldecott Honor awards in 1968 for Jane Yolen’s The Emperor and the Kite (World Publishing). In 1978, he began writing his own texts, mostly retellings and adaptations of folk and fairy tales inspired by his Chinese culture and the philosophy of Chinese painting, as well as by his love for animals and the natural world. Young’s Lon Po Po: A Red-Riding Hood Story from China (Philomel) won the 1990 Caldecott Medal. And in 1993, his Seven Blind Mice (Philomel) was named a Caldecott Honor book.

Whether illustrating his own words or someone else’s, Young continually looked for a new challenge in his work. To that end, he experimented with an array of mediums including pencil, ink, pastels, paints, cut- and torn-paper collage, and found objects. He sometimes hid symbols and puzzles in his artwork for readers to find. “Before I am involved with a project I must be moved, and as I try something exciting, I grow,” he wrote on his website. “It is my purpose to stimulate growth in the reader as an active participant as well. I feel the story has to be exciting, and a moving experience for a child.”

In all, he created more than 100 books for young readers and among his many other accolades were two nominations for the Hans Christian Andersen Award, and Lifetime Achievement Awards from both the Eric Carle Museum and the Society of Illustrators. At different times over his career, he taught art at the Pratt Institute, Yale University, Naropa Institute, and the University of California at Santa Cruz.

The Chinese martial art and health discipline of t’ai chi ch’uan “had profound influence upon my way of thinking and on the things I do,” Young said in a 1968 Something About the Author profile. Young had learned t’ai chi ch’uan in 1964 from a master who was newly arrived in New York City. By 1967, Young had begun to teach the discipline and became director of the Shr Jung T’ai Chi Ch’uan School in New York’s Chinatown. He continued as a t’ai chi ch’uan instructor for more than 40 years in Hastings-on-Hudson.

Patricia Lee Gauch, former editorial director of Philomel Books and editor of Lon Po Po and numerous other titles, paid tribute this way: “All the world was Ed’s paint box: a scrap of wrapping paper, a brown paper bag, a discarded piece of metal. Nothing was ever ‘found’ for Ed, everything, every scrap, was something to be repurposed for art’s sake. Side by side with him in his studio, amid his scraps, bags, and throwaways, I began to see art everywhere and in everything. But it wasn’t art alone; Ed’s ideas were attached to his art of whatever texture and story. They spun out from him, embracing humanity itself as he tried, valiantly, stubbornly, to attract children’s attention to the power of goodness and what was natural.”

Alvina Ling, v-p and editor-in-chief at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, offered this remembrance: “My first opportunity to work with the brilliant Ed Young was on the picture book Wabi Sabi, written by Mark Reibsten. It was a profound experience. Ed’s wife Filomena was sick during the creation of the art for Wabi Sabi, and during the chaos of her illness and eventual death, the completed original art somehow went missing—every artist and editor’s nightmare! When Ed reemerged to work on the project and discovered that the art was missing—stolen, perhaps— he took it in stride and said, ‘I’ll do the art again. And I can only promise you that it will be better.’ Well, the finished art was indeed better. Wabi Sabi went on to win a New York Times best illustrated award and became a New York Times bestseller. Ed and I worked on four more books together, from the lighthearted and silly Nighttime Ninja written by Barbara DaCosta, to a book about his childhood growing up in wartime Shanghai called The House Baba Built. Another was based on a poem he wrote for his children to reassure them after the death of their mother. Should You Be a River was a book about unconditional love, and we all can take some solace from the words he wrote—Ed is still with us all.”

Victoria Rock, founding children’s publisher and executive publishing director at Chronicle Books, fondly recalled: “I first met Ed when I was an assistant working for his longtime editor Ann Beneduce. Even as a rookie, I quickly saw that Ed was an Artist, with a capital A, and also a lovely person. Years later, when it was my great pleasure to work with him on Beyond the Great Mountains (Chronicle, 2005), he told me that he had used some scraps of paper that he had saved from books he had worked on with Ann, as a secret nod to our mutual connection. In that little moment, you see both the artist and the human.”

And Neal Porter, v-p and publisher of his eponymous imprint at Holiday House, shared a favorite anecdote: “I was lucky to have worked with Ed on three books in the mid-2000s; I wish there could have been more. Spending time with him gave me a re-education in the art and craft of picture book making. One notable exception occurred after I made one of my regular trips to Hastings to retrieve finished artwork, done in his typical collage style. When I returned home and examined the art, I realized that many bits of collage had shaken loose in transit and fallen to the bottom of the envelope, leaving me in the unenviable position of trying to determine where they were meant to go. In time we figured it out, and that was true of working with Ed. No matter what the challenges were, we always figured it out.”

Quoted from New York Times:

Ed Young, whose illustrations in some 100 children’s books, many of which he also wrote, mesmerized young and not-so-young readers with intricate depictions of fairy tales, poetry and his own life story as a Chinese immigrant, died on Sept. 29 at his home in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. He was 91.

His daughter Antonia Young confirmed the death.

Mr. Young trained as an architect and worked as a graphic designer; he never intended to become an illustrator of children’s books. But a chance opportunity to work on the book “The Mean Mouse and Other Mean Stories” (1962), by Janice May Udry, led to widespread praise, a deal with an agent and a 60-year career as one of the country’s most beloved children’s artists.

He churned out books across a wide variety of subjects and media, among them collage, pencil and charcoal, and experimented with different bookmaking formats, like accordion.

Many of his favorite techniques drew on traditions from his native China, which also inspired much of his subject matter. The first book that he also wrote, “Lon Po Po” (1991), told a traditional Chinese version of “Little Red Riding Hood,” though in this case it involved three girls who settle matters with the wolf themselves, no huntsman needed.

The first book Mr. Young wrote, “Lon Po Po,” won a Caldecott Medal.Credit...Puffin Books

The book was hailed as both a nuanced interpretation of a Chinese folk tale and a boldly feminist story. It won a Caldecott Medal, the highest honor for illustrated children’s books — one of three that Mr. Young received during his career.

“I feel that my job to be in this country is to learn as much about the West as I can and introduce the East as much as I can,” he said in a 2005 interview with the website Teaching Books. “So, my books are a study of cultures and of hearts from both sides, and introducing one to the other.”

Though his work was met with consistent praise, one common criticism was that his illustrations were too richly rendered for children to appreciate — a knock that the soft-spoken Mr. Young politely but firmly rejected.

“They respond with fascination,” he told The New York Times in 1992, adding, “I always find children much more sophisticated than people suppose. My feeling is that children are just as capable of understanding these ranges of emotions as adults.”

From a Floating Home in Portland to a Hilly Perch in Los Angeles. Which House Was Right?

Ed Tse-chun Young was born on Nov. 28, 1931, in the northern coastal city of Tianjin to Young Quanlin, an engineer, and Tang Sai Yun. When he was 3 his family moved south to Shanghai, where they lived through the Japanese occupation of the city during World War II — an experience that Mr. Young recounted in his book “The House That Baba Built” (2011).

When he was 17 he received a student visa to the United States. He studied architecture at City College in San Francisco and the University of Illinois, and received his bachelor’s degree in art from the ArtCenter School (today the ArtCenter College of Design) in Los Angeles in 1957.

He later studied at the Pratt Institute in New York City, where he also taught.

After leaving Pratt, Mr. Young found a job with an advertising design studio in Manhattan. But he found the work unrewarding and spent his lunch hours at the Central Park Zoo, drawing animals. When the studio shut down, friends suggested that he take a turn at children’s books.

“I had nothing better to do, so I took a few of my drawings that I did in my spare time to an editor at Harper & Row,” he told Teaching Books. “I didn’t expect to get a book; I didn’t even know what children’s books were like.”

Mr. Young in a room filled with art. He is leaning over a slanted table and working with his hands. Chinese characters line the top of the wall along the ceiling.

Mr. Young in his studio in 2014. “I feel that my job to be in this country is to learn as much about the West as I can and introduce the East as much as I can,” he said.Credit...Gina Randazzo

But the editor he met with, Ursula Nordstrom, was well-regarded in the industry, and she liked his work enough to assign him to illustrate “The Mean Mouse and Other Mean Stories.” An award from the American Institute of Graphic Arts immediately established him as one of the country’s foremost illustrators.

He won his first Caldecott Medal in 1968 for “The Emperor and His Kite,” written by Jane Yolen, and his third, “Seven Blind Mice,” which he also wrote, in 1993.

Mr. Young’s illustrations for “The Emperor and His Kite,” written by Jane Yolen, won him his first Caldecott Medal, in 1968.Credit...Puffin Books

Mr. Young’s first two marriages, to Mary Alice and Natasha Gorky, ended in divorce. He married Filomena Tuosto in 1986. She died in 2007. Along with his daughter, he is survived by another daughter, Ananda.

While still in college, Mr. Young suffered an injury that led to chronic knee pain. Searching for relief, he took up tai chi in 1964, studying under Cheng Man-ch’ing, a renowned instructor then living in Manhattan.

Mr. Young became a respected tai chi teacher in his own right, leading hundreds of students in classes in and around his home in the New York City suburbs.

“The practice of tai chi is about discovering yourself,” he said in an interview. “Art is about the same thing — find out about yourself. How do you produce something that is satisfying? How do you state something in the simplest manner for the maximum effect? How do you use a moment? How do you wait for the opportunity?”

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