Wallace Tripp

Wallace Whitney Tripp
Tripp pencil sketch
Occupation	illustrator, author, anthologist
Nationality	American
Genre	Children's literature
Notable awards	1977 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Picture Books
Website
trippgallery.com

Wallace Whitney Tripp (born June 26, 1940) is an American illustrator, anthologist, and author. He is known for creating anthropomorphic animal characters of emotional complexity and for his great visual and verbal humor. He is one of several illustrators of the Amelia Bedelia series of children's stories. He has illustrated over forty books,including Marguerite, Go Wash Your Feet (1985), Wallace Tripp's Wurst Seller (1981), Casey at the Bat (1978), and A Great Big Ugly Man Came Up and Tied His Horse to Me (1973). Tripp has also drawn many greeting cards for the Pawprints line, now available in limited quantities from Recycled Paper Greetings in Chicago.

Biography

Wallace Tripp was born in Boston and grew up in rural New Hampshire and New York. He attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (SMFA) where he studied graphic arts. He received a bachelor's degree in education from Keene State College and studied English at the University of New Hampshire. He then taught English for three years until choosing to devote himself full-time to illustration. For a time, Tripp's wife Marcy ran a publishing house, Sparhawk Books, that published two of his books,including Wallace Tripp's Wurst Seller. Wallace created many greeting cards for Pawprints, a family-owned business run by wife Marcy. He now lives in Hancock, New Hampshire and he typically works for HarperCollins. Wallace and Marcy Tripp have three children, two sons and a daughter. He has been retired for over twenty years due to Parkinson's disease.

Quotations

"Genius is rare as turtle fangs, but talent is common enough."

"Illustrators are word people who happen to draw. We work with one foot in a book, the other stuck in a paint pot. Our shoes are a disgrace."

"The experienced illustrator subscribes to the principle of the application of the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. Should inspiration whisk down your chimney, be at your table. The first ten thousand drawings are the hardest. Put another way, you have ten thousand bad drawings within and should expel them as quickly as possible."

"In children's books I look for artists (not necessarily the best draftsmen, either) with vitality, integrity, humor and a powerful story-telling bent. There is too much arty, pretentious, self-indulgent illustration (often not a considered accurate reflection of what the story says) looking as if intended as a portfolio presentation or a contest entry. Give me N.C. Wyeth, Ernest Shepard, Garth Williams, Bill Peet, Raymond Briggs, Richard Scarry and Graham Oakley and forget those [who perpetrate] lovely curlicues and fabulous puce washes."

Bibliography

• The Tale of a Pig: A Caucasian Folktale, McGraw, 1968.
• A Great Big Ugly Man Came Up and Tied His Horse to Me: A Book of Nonsense Verse, Little, Brown, 1973.
• My Uncle Podger: A Picture Book (based on a passage from Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome), Little, Brown, 1975.
• Granfa' Grig Had a Pig and Other Rhymes without Reason from Mother Goose (verse), Little, Brown, 1976.
• Sir Toby Jingle's Beastly Journey (Junior Literary Guild selection), Coward, 1976.
• Rhymes without Reason from Mother Goose, World's Work, 1980.
• Marguerite, Go Wash Your Feet! (verse), Houghton, 1985.
• Wallace Tripp's Wurst Seller, Sparhawk, 1981.
• Rose's are Red, Violet's are Blue and Other Silly Poems, Little Brown & Co., 1999

Bibliography as illustrator

• Reginald B. Hegarty, Rope's End, Houghton, 1965.
• Lisa Tsarelka, Stay Away From My Lawnmower, Houghton, 1965.
• Ruth Christoffer Carlsen, Henrietta Goes West, Houghton, 1966.
• Carlsen, Hildy and the Cuckoo Clock, Houghton, 1966.
• Ilse Kleberger, Grandmother Oma, Atheneum, 1967.
• Andrew Lang, editor, Read Me Another Fairy Tale, Grosset, 1967.
• Katherine E. Miller, Saint George: A Christmas Mummers' Play, Houghton, 1967.
• Gerald Dumas, Rabbits Rafferty, Houghton, 1968.
• Carlsen, Sam. Bottleby, Houghton, 1968.
• Felice Holman, The Holiday Rat, and the Utmost Mouse (short stories), Norton, 1969.
• John Erwin, Mrs. Fox, Simon & Schuster, 1969.
• Scott Corbett, The Baseball Bargain, Little, Brown, 1970.
• Tom Paxton, Jennifer's Rabbit, Putnam, 1970.
• Rene Guillot, Little Dog Lost, translated by Joan Selby-Lowndes, Lothrup, 1970.
• Betty Brock, No Flying in the House, Harper, 1970.
• Ferdinand N. Monjo, Pirates in Panama, Simon & Schuster, 1970.
• Robert Sidney Bigelow, Stubborn Bear, Little, Brown, 1970.
• Julian Bagley, Candle-Lighting Time in Bodidalee (folktales), foreword by Alfred V. Frankenstein, American Heritage Publishing Co., 1971.
• Peggy Parish, Come Back, Amelia Bedelia, Harper, 1971.
• Victor Sharoff, The Heart of the Wood, Coward, 1971.
• Marguerita Rudolph, adapter, The Magic Egg, and Other Folk Stories of Rumania, Little, Brown, 1971.
• Peter Hallard, Puppy Lost in Lapland, F. Watts, 1971.
• Patricia Thomas, "Stand Back," Said the Elephant, "I'm Going to Sneeze!," Lothrup, 1971.
• Miriam Anne Bourne, Tigers in the Woods, Coward, 1971.
• Tony Johnston, The Adventures of Mole and Troll, Putnam, 1972.
• Cynthia Jameson, adapter, Catofy the Clever (folktale), Coward, 1972.
• Liesel Moak Skorpen, Old Arthur, Harper, 1972.
• Parish, Play Ball, Amelia Bedelia, Harper, 1972.
• Carolyn Lane, The Voices of Greenwillow Pond, Houghton, 1972.
• Boris Vladimirovich Zakhoder, The Crocodile's Toothbrush, translated by Marguerita Rudolph, McGraw, 1973.
• Malcolm Hall, Headlines, (Junior Literary Guild selection), Coward, 1973.
• Johnston, Mole and Troll Trim the Tree, (Junior Literary Guild selection), Putnam, 1974, revised edition, 1980.
• Jan Wahl, Pleasant Fieldmouse's Halloween Party, Putnam, 1974.
• Robert Fremlin, Three Friends, Little, Brown, 1975.
• Ernest Lawrence Thayer, Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic, Sung in the Year 1888 (verse), Coward, 1978.
• Hilaire Belloc, The Bad Child's Book of Beasts, revised edition, Sparhawk, 1982.

Awards

• Grandfa Grig Had a Pig and Other Rhymes Without Reason from Mother Goose won the 1977 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Picture Books.

• A Great Big Ugly Man Came Up and Tied His Horse to Me: A Book of Nonsense Verse appeared on the American Library Association Notable Books for Children list.

Sources

• Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2009. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2009.
• Kingman, L. et al. (1978). Illustrators of Children's Books 1967-1976, Horn Book, p. 164.
• Silvey, A., ed (1995). Children's Books and Their Creators, p. 651-653.