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{{short description|American children's illustrator and writer}}
'''Margot Zemach''' (November 30, 1931- November 21, 1989) was an American [[illustrator]] of more than forty children's books, many of them adaptations of folk tales from around the world.
{{Use mdy dates|date=August 2020}}
'''Margot Zemach''' (November 30, 1931 – May 21, 1989)<ref name=UMN/> was an American illustrator of more than forty children's books, some of which she also wrote. Many were adaptations of [[folklore|folk tales]] from around the world, especially [[Yiddish language|Yiddish]] and other Eastern European stories.<ref name=UMN/> She and her husband Harvey Fischtrom, writing as Harve Zemach, collaborated on several picture books including ''Duffy and the Devil'' for which she won the 1974 [[Caldecott Medal]].<ref name=caldecott/>


==Life==
Margot Zemach was born in [[Los Angeles]]. When she was growing up there during the Great Depression, she drew to make people laugh but never had enough paper. She studied at the Los Angeles County Art Institute and, on a [[Fulbright Scholarship]] in 1955-1956, at the Academy of Fine Arts in [[Vienna, Austria]].
{{unreferenced section|date=November 2015}}
Margot Zemach was born in Los Angeles. Her mother was an actress and her step-father was a director, so she grew up surrounded by the theater.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Zemach |first=Margot |title=Self-portrait: Margot Zemach |date=1978 |publisher=Addison-Wesley |isbn=978-0-201-09096-3 |series=Self-portrait collection |location=Reading, Mass}}</ref> When she was growing up there during the [[Great Depression in the United States|Great Depression]], she used drawing to make people laugh but she never had enough paper. She studied at the Los Angeles County Art Institute and, on a [[Fulbright Scholarship]] in 1955–1956, at the [[Academy of Fine Arts Vienna]] in Austria.<ref name=":0" />


In 1957, Zemach married Harvey Fischtrom (1933–1974). They had four daughters,<ref name=":0" /> including Kaethe Zemach who is another writer and illustrator of children's books. Margot Zemach died in [[Berkeley, California]] on May 21, 1989, of [[amyotrophic lateral sclerosis]], or Lou Gehrig's disease.
In 1957 she married Harvey Fichstrom and her illustrating career began when he urged her to do children's books. They collaborated on their first book in 1959. She did the illustrations and he, under the [[pseudonym]] Harve Zemach, did the text. In all, they collaborated on 13 books, including the 1974 [[Caldecott Medal]] winning ''Duffy and the Devil''.

==Career==
The Zemachs had four daughters including Kaethe, also an author and illustrator of children's books. Margot Zemach died in [[Berkeley, California]] on May 21, 1989 of [[amyotrophic lateral sclerosis]] (also called [[Lou Gehrig's disease]]).

Zemach began her career when Fischtrom urged her to do children's books. Houghton Mifflin published their first collaboration in 1959, ''Small boy is listening'', based on their experiences in Vienna.<ref name=UMN/> She did the illustrations and he did the text under the pseudonym Harve Zemach. Next year Little, Brown published her work with another writer, ''Take a Giant Step'' by Hannelore Hahn.<ref name=LCC1960/>

The husband-and-wife team produced 13 books together, often simply as "Harvey & Margot Zemach" although he wrote and she illustrated. For ''Duffy and the Devil: a Cornish tale'' (1973), Margot won the [[Caldecott Medal]] from the [[American Library Association]] recognizing the year's best-illustrated U.S. children's picture book.<ref name=caldecott/> The book was also a finalist for the annual [[National Book Award for Young People's Literature|National Book Award, Children's Literature]]<ref name=nba1974/> and it was named to the [[Lewis Carroll Shelf Award]] list in 1976. Zemach was one of the Caldecott runners-up in 1970 for ''The Judge: An Untrue Tale'', written by Harve, and in 1978 for ''It Could Always Be Worse: A Yiddish Folk Tale'', which she retold.<ref name=caldecott/>

Kaethe Zemach's first publication was her only collaboration with her parents, published the year after her father died. ''The Princess and Froggie'' (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975) was a collection of stories written by Harve and Kaethe, illustrated by Margot.<ref name=LCC1975/>

For her contribution as a children's illustrator, Zemach was 1980 and 1988 U.S. nominee for the biennial, international [[Hans Christian Andersen Award]], the highest international recognition for creators of children's books.<ref name=ibby-nominee/>

A manuscript by Margot for a picture book about sibling rivalry, based on her children, was illustrated by Kaethe and published by [[Arthur A. Levine Books]] in 2005, ''Eating up Gladys''.<ref name=LCC2005/>

==Selected works==
<!-- as of 2013-07-22 these three subsections include
her top 20 books in WorldCat (see footer link)
all Harve Zemach titles in WorldCat (" ")
her one earliest listing in LCCatalog (" ")
both collaborations with Margot Zemach listed in LCCat for Kaethe Zemach (" ")
all four books illus. by Margot Zemach listed in our biography Isaac Bashevis Singer
-->

===As writer and illustrator===

* 1963, ''[[The Three Sillies]]''
* 1976, ''[[It Could always be Worse: A Yiddish Folk Tale]]''
* 1976, ''[[Hush, Little Baby]]'', a traditional lullaby
* 1977, ''[[To Hilda for Helping]]''
* 1983, ''[[The Little Red Hen: An Old Story]]''
* 1982, ''[[Jake and Honeybunch go to Heaven]]''
* 1986, ''[[The Three Wishes: An Old Story]]''
* 1988, ''[[The Three Little Pigs: An Old Story]]''
* 2001, ''[[Some from the Moon, Some from the Sun: Poems and Songs for Everyone]]'', traditional poems and songs

===Written by Harve Zemach===
Margot Zemach illustrated picture books written by her husband as [[Harve Zemach]]. At least some book covers credited them simply as "Harve & Margot Zemach".

* 1959, ''Small Boy is Listening'' ([[Houghton Mifflin]])
* 1961, ''A Hat with a Rose''
* 1964, ''Nail Soup: A Swedish Folk Tale''
* 1965, ''Salt: A Russian Tale''
* 1965, ''The Tricks of Master Dabble''
* 1966, ''Mommy, Buy Me a China Doll: Adapted From an Ozark Children's Song''
* 1966, ''[[The Speckled Hen]]: A Russian Nursery Rhyme''
* 1967, ''Too Much Nose: An Italian Tale''
* 1969, ''The Judge: An Untrue Tale''
* 1970, ''Awake and Dreaming''
* 1971, ''A Penny A Look: An Old Story''
* 1973, ''[[Duffy and the Devil]]'' (a [[Cornwall|Cornish]] tale)
* 1975, ''The Princess and Froggie'', stories by Harve Zemach and [[Kaethe Zemach]]<ref name=LCC1975>[http://lccn.loc.gov/75000697 "The princess and froggie"]{{dead link|date=June 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}. LCC record. Retrieved July 13, 2013.</ref>

===As illustrator with other writers===

* 1960, ''[[Take a Giant Step]]'', [[Hannelore Hahn]] ([[Little, Brown and Company]])<ref name=LCC1960>[http://lccn.loc.gov/60005862 "Take a giant step"]{{dead link|date=June 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}. Library of Congress Catalog Record (LCC). Retrieved July 13, 2013.</ref>
* 1967, ''[[Mazel and Shlimazel, or The Milk of a Lioness]]'', [[Isaac Bashevis Singer]]
* 1968, ''[[When Shlemiel Went to Warsaw and Other Stories]]'', by Issac Bashevis Singer
* 1971, ''[[Alone in the Wild Forest]]'', by Issac Bashevis Singer
* 1972, ''[[Simon Boom Gives a Wedding]]'', by Yuri Suhl
* 1973, ''[[The Foundling and Other Tales of Prydain]]'' by [[Lloyd Alexander]] (first ed. only)
* 1976, ''[[Naftali the Storyteller and his Horse, Sus: And Other Stories]]'', by Issac Bashevis Singer
* 1982, ''[[The Cat's Elbow and Other Secret Languages]]'', by [[Alvin Schwartz (children's author)|Alvin Schwartz]]
* 1985, ''[[The Sign in Mendel's Window]]'', by [[Mildred Phillips]]
* 1987, ''[[The Two Foolish Cats: Suggested by a Japanese Folktale]]'', by [[Yoshiko Uchida]]
* 1988, ''[[The Chinese Mirror]]'', by [[Mirra Ginsburg]]
* 1988, ''[[Sing a Song of Popcorn: Every Child's Book of Poems]]'', by [[Beatrice Schenk de Regniers]]
* 1989, ''[[All God's Critters got a Place in the Choir]]'', by [[Bill Staines]]

===As writer only===

* 2005, ''[[Eating Up Gladys]]'', illustrated by Kaethe Zemach<ref name=LCC2005>[http://lccn.loc.gov/2004023417 "Eating up Gladys"]{{dead link|date=June 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}. LCC record. Retrieved July 13, 2013. See publisher description.</ref>


==References==
==References==
{{reflist |25em |refs=
* Contemporary Authors Online, Thomson Gale, 2007.
<ref name=UMN>
* [http://special.lib.umn.edu/findaid/xml/CLRC-85.xml Margot Zemach Collection] in the Children's Literature Research Collections at the [[University of Minnesota]]
[http://special.lib.umn.edu/findaid/xml/CLRC-85.xml "Margot Zemach Collection"]. Children's Literature Research Collections. [[University of Minnesota]]. Retrieved July 13, 2013. With biographical sketch.</ref>

<!-- awards refs -->
<ref name=caldecott>
[http://www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/caldecottmedal/caldecotthonors/caldecottmedal "Caldecott Medal & Honor Books, 1938–Present"]. [[Association for Library Service to Children]] (ALSC). American Library Association (ALA).<br>
&nbsp; [http://www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/caldecottmedal/aboutcaldecott/aboutcaldecott "The Randolph Caldecott Medal"]. ALSC. ALA. Retrieved 2013-07-13.</ref>
<ref name=nba1974>
[https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-1974 "National Book Awards – 1974"]. [[National Book Foundation]]. Retrieved July 13, 2013.</ref>
<ref name=ibby-nominee>
[http://www.literature.at/viewer.alo?objid=14769&viewmode=fullscreen&scale=3.33&rotate=&page=105 "Candidates for the Hans Christian Andersen Awards 1956–2002"] {{webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20130114185952/http://www.literature.at/viewer.alo?objid=14769&viewmode=fullscreen&scale=3.33&rotate=&page=105 |date=January 14, 2013 }}. ''The Hans Christian Andersen Awards, 1956–2002''. [[IBBY]]. [[Gyldendal]]. 2002. Pages 110–18. Hosted by [[Austrian Literature Online]] (literature.at). Retrieved July 14, 2013.</ref>
}}
* ''Contemporary Authors Online'', Thomson Gale, 2007.


==External links==
==External links==
{{Portal|Children's literature |Visual arts }}
* [http://www.embracingthechild.org/azemach.html Margot Zemach] in "Embracing the Child"
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20131203020217/http://www.susanjeffers-art.com/ "Margot Zemach"] at Embracing the Child
* {{LCAuth|n80036667|Margot Zemach|50|}}
* [http://lccn.loc.gov/n50014070 Harve Zemach] at LC Authorities, with 16 records, and [https://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n50-014070 at WorldCat]
* [http://lccn.loc.gov/n86012243 Kaethe Zemach] at LC Authorities, with 12 records, and [https://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n86-012243 at WorldCat]

{{Authority control}}


{{Authority control|VIAF=2478486}}
{{Persondata <!-- Metadata: see [[Wikipedia:Persondata]]. -->
| NAME = Zemach, Margot
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES =
| SHORT DESCRIPTION = American illustrator
| DATE OF BIRTH = 1931
| PLACE OF BIRTH =
| DATE OF DEATH = 1989
| PLACE OF DEATH =
}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zemach, Margot}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zemach, Margot}}
[[Category:1931 births]]
[[Category:1931 births]]
[[Category:1989 deaths]]
[[Category:1989 deaths]]
[[Category:American women children's book illustrators]]
[[Category:Caldecott Medal winners]]
[[Category:Caldecott Medal winners]]
[[Category:Children's book illustrators]]
[[Category:American children's book illustrators]]
[[Category:American illustrators]]
[[Category:Deaths from motor neuron disease in California]]
[[Category:Deaths from motor neurone disease]]
[[Category:Artists from Los Angeles]]
[[Category:Writers from Los Angeles]]

[[Category:American children's writers]]

[[Category:American women children's writers]]
{{Illustrator-stub}}
[[Category:20th-century American women writers]]

[[Category:20th-century American artists]]
[[sv:Margot Zemach]]
[[Category:20th-century American women artists]]
[[Category:Academy of Fine Arts Vienna alumni]]

Latest revision as of 23:20, 20 October 2024

Margot Zemach (November 30, 1931 – May 21, 1989)[1] was an American illustrator of more than forty children's books, some of which she also wrote. Many were adaptations of folk tales from around the world, especially Yiddish and other Eastern European stories.[1] She and her husband Harvey Fischtrom, writing as Harve Zemach, collaborated on several picture books including Duffy and the Devil for which she won the 1974 Caldecott Medal.[2]

Life

[edit]

Margot Zemach was born in Los Angeles. Her mother was an actress and her step-father was a director, so she grew up surrounded by the theater.[3] When she was growing up there during the Great Depression, she used drawing to make people laugh but she never had enough paper. She studied at the Los Angeles County Art Institute and, on a Fulbright Scholarship in 1955–1956, at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in Austria.[3]

In 1957, Zemach married Harvey Fischtrom (1933–1974). They had four daughters,[3] including Kaethe Zemach who is another writer and illustrator of children's books. Margot Zemach died in Berkeley, California on May 21, 1989, of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease.

Career

[edit]

Zemach began her career when Fischtrom urged her to do children's books. Houghton Mifflin published their first collaboration in 1959, Small boy is listening, based on their experiences in Vienna.[1] She did the illustrations and he did the text under the pseudonym Harve Zemach. Next year Little, Brown published her work with another writer, Take a Giant Step by Hannelore Hahn.[4]

The husband-and-wife team produced 13 books together, often simply as "Harvey & Margot Zemach" although he wrote and she illustrated. For Duffy and the Devil: a Cornish tale (1973), Margot won the Caldecott Medal from the American Library Association recognizing the year's best-illustrated U.S. children's picture book.[2] The book was also a finalist for the annual National Book Award, Children's Literature[5] and it was named to the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award list in 1976. Zemach was one of the Caldecott runners-up in 1970 for The Judge: An Untrue Tale, written by Harve, and in 1978 for It Could Always Be Worse: A Yiddish Folk Tale, which she retold.[2]

Kaethe Zemach's first publication was her only collaboration with her parents, published the year after her father died. The Princess and Froggie (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975) was a collection of stories written by Harve and Kaethe, illustrated by Margot.[6]

For her contribution as a children's illustrator, Zemach was 1980 and 1988 U.S. nominee for the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest international recognition for creators of children's books.[7]

A manuscript by Margot for a picture book about sibling rivalry, based on her children, was illustrated by Kaethe and published by Arthur A. Levine Books in 2005, Eating up Gladys.[8]

Selected works

[edit]

As writer and illustrator

[edit]

Written by Harve Zemach

[edit]

Margot Zemach illustrated picture books written by her husband as Harve Zemach. At least some book covers credited them simply as "Harve & Margot Zemach".

  • 1959, Small Boy is Listening (Houghton Mifflin)
  • 1961, A Hat with a Rose
  • 1964, Nail Soup: A Swedish Folk Tale
  • 1965, Salt: A Russian Tale
  • 1965, The Tricks of Master Dabble
  • 1966, Mommy, Buy Me a China Doll: Adapted From an Ozark Children's Song
  • 1966, The Speckled Hen: A Russian Nursery Rhyme
  • 1967, Too Much Nose: An Italian Tale
  • 1969, The Judge: An Untrue Tale
  • 1970, Awake and Dreaming
  • 1971, A Penny A Look: An Old Story
  • 1973, Duffy and the Devil (a Cornish tale)
  • 1975, The Princess and Froggie, stories by Harve Zemach and Kaethe Zemach[6]

As illustrator with other writers

[edit]

As writer only

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b c "Margot Zemach Collection". Children's Literature Research Collections. University of Minnesota. Retrieved July 13, 2013. With biographical sketch.
  2. ^ a b c "Caldecott Medal & Honor Books, 1938–Present". Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC). American Library Association (ALA).
      "The Randolph Caldecott Medal". ALSC. ALA. Retrieved 2013-07-13.
  3. ^ a b c Zemach, Margot (1978). Self-portrait: Margot Zemach. Self-portrait collection. Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley. ISBN 978-0-201-09096-3.
  4. ^ a b "Take a giant step"[permanent dead link‍]. Library of Congress Catalog Record (LCC). Retrieved July 13, 2013.
  5. ^ "National Book Awards – 1974". National Book Foundation. Retrieved July 13, 2013.
  6. ^ a b "The princess and froggie"[permanent dead link‍]. LCC record. Retrieved July 13, 2013.
  7. ^ "Candidates for the Hans Christian Andersen Awards 1956–2002" Archived January 14, 2013, at archive.today. The Hans Christian Andersen Awards, 1956–2002. IBBY. Gyldendal. 2002. Pages 110–18. Hosted by Austrian Literature Online (literature.at). Retrieved July 14, 2013.
  8. ^ a b "Eating up Gladys"[permanent dead link‍]. LCC record. Retrieved July 13, 2013. See publisher description.
  • Contemporary Authors Online, Thomson Gale, 2007.
[edit]
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