Posts tagged with obituaries
Rest in peace, Ms. Bell
I ran across this obituary of translator Anthea Bell recently, and it took me a while to remember why I knew Ms. Bell's name. It turns out I'd spent a lot of time complaining about her in 2012, while I was wondering...
RIP, Ms. Duncan
YA suspense author Lois Duncan has died, according to the Washington Times. Ms. Duncan is best known for her book I Know What You Did Last Summer (which was made into a movie in 1997, transforming Duncan's somber novel about teens being forced to take responsibility for their actions into a slasher film, much to her irritation). Ms. Duncan...
RIP, Walter Dean Myers
Critically acclaimed YA author Walter Dean Myers died this week at the age of 76. Myers (whose motto was apparently "Reading is not optional") served as the 2012/2013 National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, and campaigned tirelessly against the extreme racial imbalance featured in children' literature...
RIP, Mary Stewart
According to the Guardian, romantic suspense author Mary Stewart has died at age 97. Seeing as my favorite Stewart novel (the glorious Nine Coaches Waiting) was published in 1958, I admit I'd always assumed Ms. Stewart had died years ago...
RIP, E. L. Konigsburg.
We've been meaning to write about children's author E. L. Konigsburg's death for a week now, but we're disorganized. Sorry, Ms. Konigsburg, no disrespect was meant—we will always love you and your glorious 1968 novel From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which opens with a paragraph that spoke to the very souls of thousands of nerdy, finicky children...
Joe Kubert: 1926-2012
Another obituary to post this week, sadly: Joe Kubert, one of comic books' most respected and prolific artists, died last Sunday at the age of 85. In addition to his long and successful career as an artist and writer, in 1976 Kubert and his wife co-founded the Kubert School, the only accredited trade school devoted entirely to cartooning...
Helen Gurley Brown: 1922-2012
Helen Gurley Brown, the longtime editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, died yesterday at the age of 90. Brown was a polarizing figure, but she will be remembered as the author of the 1962 advice book Sex and the Single Girl...
Ray Bradbury: August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012
Ray Bradbury, author of The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, and the hugely creepy Something Wicked This Way Comes, died yesterday at age 91. He apparently wanted to be buried on Mars; here's hoping he ends up there.
A sadder place
As everyone who has checked the Internet in the past few hours should already know, Maurice Sendak died today at the age of 83. Sendak apparently had no immediate family (his longtime partner died in 2007), so our condolences go out to the world at large.
A great loss to art
The illustrator John Griffiths has died at age 85. Griffiths was an incredibly talented and versatile artist, and produced a long line of memorable book covers for Penguin, a handful of which have been collected into this slideshow.
A legacy to be proud of
We were sorry to hear that Jan Berenstain, who co-wrote and illustrated the perennially popular Berenstain Bears series with her husband Stan, suffered a severe stroke on Thursday and died Friday without regaining consciousness. Ms. Berenstain was 88, and is survived by two sons and four grandchildren.
Diana Wynne Jones: 1924 to 2011
I was deeply saddened to learn that Diana Wynne Jones, author of the Chrestomanci books, Howl's Moving Castle, and about a thousand other insanely awesome and profoundly weird children's and YA fa...
Goodbye, Lois Lane.
According to Publishers Weekly's The Beat, Joanne Siegel, widow of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel and and the woman who inspired the Lois Lane character, passed away yesterday. Siegel was 93, a...
RIP, OneManga
It is with mixed emotions (about 55% irritation, 45% resignation) that I say goodbye to OneManga, the popular manga scanlation site that shut down for good last week. Now, it's possible that the ...
RIP, Harvey Pekar
NPR put together a really nice obit for Harvey Pekar, the author of the American Splendor series, most of which focused on the day-to-day reality of life in Cleveland. Mr. Pekar was found dead in...
RIP, Kirkus
Horn Book's Roger Sutton posted a nice preemptive obituary for Kirkus Reviews, the pre-publication book review magazine scheduled to close at the end of the year. Sutton acknowleges Kirkus's repu...
People Who Died
The Times has a nice obit up for Jim Carroll, poet, musician, and The Basketball Diaries author, who died on Friday at his home in Manhattan at age 60. Rest in peace, Mr. Carroll.
Kind of a stretch...
...but, hey, we love The Yellow Submarine, so we felt a need to do this shout-out. Heinz Edelmann, the art director for the incredibly distinctive 1968 Beatles film The Yellow Submarine, died last...
Michael Crichton: October 23, 1942 – November 4, 2008
Holy moly: Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton died yesterday after a private battle with cancer. He was 66. Our sympathy goes out to his family.
RIP, Tony Hillerman.
Tony Hillerman, author of the excellent Navajo Tribal Police mystery novels featuring Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, died of pulmonary failure yesterday. He was 83, and had been in poor health for se...
Children's Book Illustrator Tasha Tudor dies at 92
The New York Times has an obituary up for Tasha Tudor, a well-known children's book illustrator who died last Wednesday at age 92. Tudor was a famously colorful character who chose to live as tho...
Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007)
We were very sorry to hear that Madeleine L'Engle, author of the mind-bogglingly awesome children's classic A Wrinkle in Time, died last Thursday. Ms. L'Engle lived to a ripe old eighty-eight, an...