Alice and martin provensen biography of martin
Home / General Biography Information / Alice and martin provensen biography of martin
After college, Alice worked with Walter Lantz Studio, creator of Woody Woodpecker, and Martin worked for Walt Disney Studio, where he collaborated on Dumbo, Fantasia, and Pinocchio.
They met in 1943, when Martin, who was then in the Navy, was assigned to Walter Lantz Studio to help create instructional films for the military. Tales from the Ballet!
They also created their own texts to illustrate, including The Year at Maple Hill Farm and The Animals at Maple Hill Farm (both Simon & Schuster), which captured life on their farm in Dutchess County.
In all, Alice and Martin wrote and illustrated more than fifty books. Often they chose the road less traveled, crafting intimate, sketch-book-style picture books like The Year at Maple Hill Farm about life in the country; or chronicling little-known true stories, as in The Glorious Flight: Across the Channel with Louis Blériot, for which they won the 1984 Caldecott Medal. After Martin Provensen died, Alice carried on, creating an astonishing array of new work, from the monumental The Buck Stops Here to the cozily charming A Day in the Life of Murphy.
Alice Provensen (1918-2018) and Martin Provensen(1916-1987) worked side by side for forty-three years, creating memorable award-winning picture books as a team.
Their best-known work appears in A Visit to William Blake’s Inn by Nancy Willard, named a Caldecott Honor Book in 1982, and The Glorious Flight, which they wrote as well as illustrated, winner of the Caldecott Medal in 1984.
The Provensens’ early lives were remarkably similar. Since Martin’s death in 1987, Alice has written and illustrated her own work, including My Fellow Americans: A Family Album (Harcourt) and The Buck Stops Here: The Presidents of the United States, which Viking just re-released in updated form.
Author and illustrator Alice Provensen died on April 23, 2018.
Books by Alice and Martin Provensen that are still in print:
1) The Golden Mother Goose- originally published in 1948
2) The Color Kittens- originally published in 1949
3) Katie the Kitten- originally published in 1949
4) The Fuzzy Duckling- originally published in 1949
5) The Fireside Cook Book by James Beard- originally published in 1949
6) A Child's Garden of Verses- originally published in 1951
7) The Provensen Book of Fairy Tales - originally published in 1971
8) Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm - originally published in 1974
9) The Year at Maple Hill Farm - originally published in 1978
10) A Visit to William Blake’s Inn- originally published in 1981
11) The Glorious Flight - originally published in 1983
12) The Truth About Max - 2023
The book by Alice Provensen that is still in print is……
13) A Day in the Life of Murphy - 2003
Many other Provensen books are available for sale on Amazon.
Alice and Martin Provensen
Alice Provensen (1918-2018) met her husband Martin (1916-1987) in Los Angeles in 1943, where both held coveted spots in the burgeoning animation industry—he at Disney, she at the rival Walter Lantz Studio, creator of “Woody Woodpecker.” During the war years, the Provensens worked on military training films.
They were known from the start for their sprightly wit and elegant contemporary design sense. Both were born in Chicago and moved with their families to California when they were twelve. Over the years, their work deepened as the couple pursued their love of historical research, world travel, and artistic self-reinvention.
They married the following year and lived in Washington, D.C., and New York City before moving to Dutchess County, New York.
The Provensen’s first picture book was The Fireside Book of Folk Songs, published by Simon & Schuster in 1947. She was 99.
< See the other Lifetime Achievement Award Winners
.
The Charge of the Light Brigade!Then, with the war’s end, they turned to book illustration and, joining forces as a tight-knit, soon-to-be-legendary collaboration team, created book after book of rare graphic distinction, nearly all of them for children.
The Provensens first made their mark as the illustrators of such hugely popular Little Golden Books as Margaret Wise Brown’s The Color Kittens and of larger-scale Golden volumes like Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses.
The Iliad and The Odyssey! Following that, they illustrated several beloved Little Golden Books, such as The Color Kittens and The Fuzzy Duckling. No project was too big or daunting for them. Their work was on the New York Times’ annual list of “Ten Best Illustrated Books” nine times, and in addition to their Caldecott awards, they were honored with the Art Books for Children citation of the Brooklyn Museum and a Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators.