Kurt Wiese

Kurt Wiese (April 22, 1887 – May 27, 1974) was a German-born book illustrator. Wiese wrote and illustrated 20 children's books and illustrated another 300 for other authors.

Biography

Wiese was born in Minden, Germany. He aspired to be an artist but was discouraged by his community.

World War One

Wiese lived and traveled in China for six years, selling merchandise as a young man. At the outbreak of World War I, he was captured by the Japanese, and turned over to the British. He spent five years as a prisoner, most of them in Australia, where his fascination with the animal life inspired him to start sketching again. After his release at the end of the war, Wiese returned to Germany but the economy was so bad that he moved to Brazil.

United States

Wiese began his illustration career in Brazil, and in 1927 moved to the United States. His first critical success was with the illustrations for Felix Salten's Bambi in 1929. In 1930 he married Gertrude Hansen, with whom he lived on a farm in Kingwood Township, New Jersey.

Awards

• Caldecott Honor Book Award in 1946 for You Can Write Chinese.
• Caldecott Honor Book Award in 1948 for Fish in the Air.
• Newbery Award winner Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze(illustrator).
• Newbery Honor books Honk the Moose, Li Lun, Lad of Courage, and Daughter of the Mountains(illustrator)

Selected works

Freddy the Pig

Main article: Freddy the Pig

Freddy the Pig was featured in 26 books written by Walter R. Brooks, illustrated by Wiese, and published by Alfred A. Knopf from 1927 to 1958. The first two were titled To and Again and More To and Again – in reference to constituent journeys to and back again from Florida and the North Pole. They were followed by Freddy the Detective (1932), three more various titles, 19 novels with "Freddy" titles (1940–1958) and The Collected Poems of Freddy the Pig (1953). From some time all 25 novels have been issued with "Freddy" titles.

• The Art of Freddy, Brooks, Wiese and Michael Cart (Overlook Press, 2002)

Other

New York City publishers except as noted.

• Bambi, A Life in the Woods, translated by Whittaker Chambers from the 1923 German by Felix Salten (Simon & Schuster, 1929), LCCN 29-5235
• The Hound of Florence, translated by Huntley Paterson from the 1923 German by Felix Salten (Simon & Schuster, 1930)
• Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze, Elizabeth Foreman Lewis (Philadelphia, Chicago: John C. Winston Co., 1932)
• Silver Chief, Dog of the North, Jack O'Brien (Winston, 1933)
• The Story about Ping, Marjorie Flack (Viking Press, 1933)
• Farm Boy: A Hunt for Indian Treasure, Phil Stong (Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1934)
• Ho-Ming – Girl of New China, Elizabeth Lewis (Winston, 1934)
• Honk, the Moose, Phil Stong (Dodd, Mead and Co., 1935)
• Valiant, Dog Of The Timberline, Jack O'Brien (Grosset & Dunlap, 1935)
• All the Mowgli Stories, Rudyard Kipling (Kipling Collection, Library of Congress; Doubleday, Doran, 1936)
• Sheep, Archer B. Gilfillan (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1936)
• The Five Chinese Brothers, Claire Huchet Bishop (Coward-McCann, 1938)
• Yen-Foh A Chinese Boy, adapted from the Chinese by Ethel J. Eldridge (Chicago: Albert Whitman & Co., 1939)
• Pecos Bill and Lightning, Leigh Peck (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1940)
• With Love and Irony, Yutang Lin (John Day Company, 1940)
• The Ferryman, Claire Huchet Bishop (Coward-McCann, 1941)
• The Adventures of Monkey, adapted from the 1942 abridged translation by Arthur Waley from the Chinese of Wu Ch'eng-En (John Day, 1944)
• You Can Write Chinese, picture book created by Wiese (Viking, 1945) – a Caldecott Honor Book
• Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, Jules Verne (Cleveland and New York: World Pub. Co., 1946) – an edition of the 1870 classic
• Li Lun, Lad of Courage, Carolyn Treffinger (Abingdon Press, 1947)
• Daughter of the Mountains, Louise Rankin (Viking, 1948)
• Fish in the Air, picture book created by Wiese (Viking, 1948) – a Caldecott Honor Book
• The Fables of Aesop, Joseph Jacobs [1889] (Macmillan US, 1950) – an edition of classic Aesop's Fables
• Happy Easter, picture book created by Wiese (Viking, 1952)
• All about Volcanoes and Earthquakes, Frederick H. Pough (Random House, 1953)
• Lions in the Barn, Virginia Frances Voight (Holiday House, 1955)
• Pika and the Roses, Elizabeth Coatsworth (Pantheon Books, 1959)
• Twenty-two Bears, Claire Huchet Bishop (Viking, 1964)
• The Truffle Pig, Claire Huchet Bishop (Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1971)

See also

• Pictured Geography – picture books created by Marguerite Henry and Wiese (two sets of 8 published 1941 and 1946)

External links

• AskArt.com
• Guide to the Kurt Wiese papers at the University of Oregon
• Kurt Wiese at Library of Congress Authorities, with 337 catalog records