“His art was not modern for the sake of modern,” Marcus says. “Historically, he was the leading illustrator in America to introduce the spirit of modernism to children’s book art,” says Leonard Marcus, perhaps the foremost scholar of children’s books in the United States and the curator of “Magician of the Modern: The Art of Leonard Weisgard” at The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst through June 5. He worked on more than 20 books with her, a third of her output during her too-short life.īrown and Weisgard shared an interest in combining modernist aesthetics with progressive educational ideas.

Weisgard didn’t illustrate those books and their spectacular success has overshadowed the fact that he was the legendary children’s book author’s most extensive collaborator. She was in the middle of writing a series of picture books that would become beloved classics: “The Runaway Bunny” (1942), “Goodnight Moon” (1947), “The Color Kittens” (1949). Which was actually a pen name (taken from a Maine lobsterman pal) of author Margaret Wise Brown. Weisgard’s collaborator on the book was credited as Golden MacDonald. 'The Little Island' is a poetic idyll on a Maine island as the seasons turn. “Children are never as disturbed as grown-ups by contemporary arts, a streamlined plane, or a gallery of modern painting,” artist Leonard Weisgard asserted when he spoke in San Francisco in 1947 as he accepted the Caldecott Medal, the top honor for children’s picture books, for his illustrations in “The Little Island.” “They see an image with real meaning and vitality and sometimes with incongruous humor giving it a sharper reality.”

(Courtesy Eric Carle Museum) This article is more than 6 years old. 'There was a little island in the ocean.' Detail of Leonard Weisgard illustration from 'The Little Island' by Golden MacDonald (aka Margaret Wise Brown), 1946.

Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown