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Leo Lionni
Leo Lionni was born May 5, 1910 in the Netherlands but spent two years in Philadelphia before living in Italy when he was in high school. His mom was an opera singer and his dad was an accountant.

He spent much of his time as a kid in Amsterdam’s museums, teaching himself to draw. None of his education didn’t include formal art courses.

Leo was a well known and respected painter in Italy, working in the avant-garde and Futurism styles from 1931 to 1939. In 1935, he got an economics degree from the University of Genoa. Towards the end of this period, he devoted himself more to advertising design.

Starting in 1939, he worked as an art director for several advertising agencies in the United States, where he worked as an art director, at which he was very successful at, acquiring accounts from Chrysler Plymouth and Ford Motors, among others. He commissioned art from Saul Steinberg, Fernand Leger, Alexander Calder, and Willem de Kooning. Leo was a member of the Advertising Art Hall of Fame.

Starting in 1946, he also held various teaching jobs, when he taught advertising art at Black Mountain College. He also was a teacher at the Parsons School of Design in 1954, the Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India in 1967, the University of Illinois in 1967, and the Cooper Union from 1982 to 1985.

In 1948, he took a job as the art director at Fortune, which he held onto until the year 1960. Leo also had outside clients, which included designing The Family Man catalogue design for the Museum of Modern Art, and he was also design director for Olivetti, for whom he produced brochures, ads, and showroom design for.

In 1960, he went back to Italy and began writing and illustrating children’s books. In 1962, “Inch by Inch” won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award.

He also won the 1984 American Institute of Graphic Arts Gold Medal and was a four time Caldecott Honor Winner for “Inch by Inch”, “Swimmy”, “Frederick”, and “Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse”. In 1965, he won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis. Based on a 2007 online poll, “Frederick” was listed by the National Education Association as one of its “Teachers’ Top 100 Books for Children”.

He always thought of himself as an artist. He worked in many disciplines that included painting, photography, drawing, and sculpture. He had one man shows in countries such as the Middle East, the United States, Asia, and Europe. Leo continued working as an artist until right before his death in the year 1999.

Leo married Nora Maffi, daughter of Fabrizio Maffi, a founder of the Italian Communist Part, and they had two sons together, Paolo and Louis.

Leo launched his career as an author/illustrator of children’s books in 1959. Little Blue and Little Yellow was originally developed from a story which he improvised for his grandkids during a boring train ride. It is the first of what is now a long list of children’s picture books.

He’d usually draw pictures as he told stories to his grandkids, however on the long train ride he came up with “Little Blue and Little Yellow”, he had no drawing materials. So he ripped out circles of blue and yellow from a magazine to aid him in telling the story he had in mind.

He died at the age of 89 on October 11, 1999 at his home in Tuscany, Italy.

“Inch by Inch” is a children’s picture book that was released in the year 1960. Is it possible to measure a song?

Meet a winsome, winning inchworm that is proud of his own ability to measure anything under the sun; from a toucan’s beak to a robin’s tail.

But when a hungry nightingale threatens to eat him for breakfast unless he’s able to measure her song, this inchworm calls upon his skill and craft to creatively solve this dilemma.

“The Alphabet Tree” is a children’s picture book that was released in the year 1968. When this fierce wind threatens to blow all of the letters right out of the alphabet tree, they have to band together in words—and then sentences—so that they can create a message that is even stronger than the wind. Peace on Earth.

With their new found knowledge, there is nothing that letters cannot do in this gentle little parable about the power of the written word.

“Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse” is a children’s picture book that was released in the year 1969. Everybody loves Willy the wind-up mouse, but Alexander, who is a real mouse, gets chased away with mousetraps and brooms. Wouldn’t it be just wonderful to be cuddled and loved, Alexander thinks, and he wishes that he too could be a wind-up mouse.

In this gentle fable about a mechanical mouse and a real one, Leo explores the magic of friendship.

“Fish is Fish” is a children’s picture book that was released in the year 1974. A tadpole and a minnow, who are two best friends and practically inseparable from each other until the tadpole grows legs and decides to explore the world outside of the pond.

When the tadpole, who is now a frog, comes back to tell his buddy about the extraordinary things that he has seen, the minnow, who is now a fish, attempts following in the frog’s footsteps. However soon finds that land isn’t what he expected. Friendship really saves the day in this imaginative story about a fish out of water.

“An Extraordinary Egg” is a children’s picture book that was released in the year 1974. It is an extraordinary day for three frogs on Pebble Island when one finds a beautiful white egg. They have never seen a chicken egg in their lives, but they are certain that is what it has to be.

So when the egg hatches and out crawls a long green, scaly creature, it is only natural that they would refer to it as a chicken. This is a hilarious case of mistaken identity that kids are sure to delight in.