Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire

• 1. Introduction

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  Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire spent their careers turning the myths of ancient worlds and the heroes of a new country into picture books that generations of American children grew up reading. They were immigrants who arrived in Brooklyn in 1929 with little money and no guaranteed future, and they left behind a body of work that spans everything from Abraham Lincoln to the Norse gods to Anton Chekhov. What drove two European artists to become defining voices of American children's literature? And how did a near-fatal bus-trolley collision in Paris end up making it all possible?

• 2. Two Artists, Two Continents

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  Edgar Parin was born on the 30th of September, 1898, in Munich, Germany, to an Italian portrait painter named Gino Parin and a mother, Ella Auler, who had made her way from St. Louis to Paris as a talented artist and musician. His parents separated when he was six years old, and he spent his childhood moving between them, travelling across Europe with his father. He later took his mother's maiden name after she changed it from Auler to d'Aulaire.

  Edgar's education was wide-ranging. After a year studying architecture in Munich, he turned to art at the city's School of Arts and Crafts, known in German as the Kunstgewerbeschule. His teachers included Hans Hofmann and Henri Matisse. He studied fresco in Florence, painted murals in France and Norway, and exhibited his work in Paris, Berlin, and Oslo. By the mid-1920s he had built a steady practice illustrating books in Germany.

  Ingri Mortenson was born on the 27th of December, 1904, in Kongsberg, Norway, into a family already steeped in artistic life. Her uncle was a clergyman and poet who translated the Icelandic Eddas into Norwegian and set his own poetry to music written by Edvard Grieg. When Ingri was fifteen, the Norwegian painter Harriet Backer encouraged her to pursue art seriously. She went on to study at art schools in Norway, Germany, and France.

• 3. A Collision That Changed Everything

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  Ingri and Edgar met in Munich while she was still an art student there. They married in 1925. For a few years they each continued building independent careers across Europe.

  The pivot came by accident. A near-fatal bus-trolley collision in Paris left the couple with a modest insurance settlement. It was not a fortune, but it was enough: Edgar used the money to pay for steerage-class passage to the United States, traveling ahead of Ingri to scout for opportunities. He found enough book illustration commissions to send for her, and in 1929 they moved into a cold-water walk-up flat in Brooklyn.

  For a time they worked separately even in their new country. Edgar concentrated on wood block engravings and stone lithography. Ingri took portrait commissions from prominent businessmen. Their individual work caught the attention of the director of the New York Public Library, and it was on her suggestion that they turned their combined talents toward children's books. In 1931 they published their first collaboration, The Magic Rug, through Doubleday. Shortly after that, they became United States citizens.

• 4. The Caldecott and American Heroes

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  Abraham Lincoln, published in 1939, brought the d'Aulaires their most celebrated recognition. The American Library Association awarded it the Caldecott Medal in 1940, the third time the medal had been given, for the most distinguished American picture book for children published the previous year.

  Over the following decades the couple produced a series of illustrated biographies of American figures, including Pocahontas, Benjamin Franklin, and Buffalo Bill. The Buffalo Bill book, published in 1952, won the Boy's Club award the following year. Edgar also illustrated Children of the Soil: A Story of Scandinavia by Nora Burglon, which made Burglon a runner-up for the 1932 Newbery Medal.

  By 1941 the d'Aulaires had settled into a more permanent life in Wilton, Connecticut, where they lived and worked until their deaths in the 1980s. They also maintained a farm in Royalton, Vermont. Across their career together they produced 27 illustrated books for children.

• 5. Norway, Greece, and the Mythic Books

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  Before the American history books, many of the d'Aulaires' early titles drew on Ingri's Norwegian roots. Ola, Children of the Northlights, and East of the Sun and West of the Moon all depicted Norwegian scenery and folktales. That Scandinavian thread ran through their work for decades and eventually produced two of their most lasting books.

  Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths, published by Doubleday in 1962, was a 192-page compendium spread across 46 chapters. The breadth of illustration and detail made it a staple in American schools and households.

  In 1967 they published Norse Gods and Giants, drawing on both the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda to present 30 Norse myths in 154 pages. D'Aulaires' Trolls followed in 1972, and the New York Times Book Review named it one of the outstanding books of that year. It also became a finalist for the National Book Award in the children's literature category. The d'Aulaires completed a sequel in 1976, The Terrible Troll Bird, adapting material from their earlier book Ola and Blakken.

  The couple also received the Catholic Library Association Regina Medal in 1970 for continued distinguished contribution to children's literature, and in 1974 they were the United States nominee for the biennial Hans Christian Andersen Award for children's illustrators.

• 6. A Golden Age and Its Legacy

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  The d'Aulaires belonged to a specific generation of immigrant artists who arrived in America and reshaped what picture books could be. Their peers in this group included Feodor Rojankovsky, Roger Duvoisin, Ludwig Bemelmans, Miska Petersham, and Tibor Gergely. Together these artists are credited with helping define the Golden Age of picture books in mid-twentieth-century America.

  Ingri died on the 24th of October, 1980. Edgar survived her by nearly six years, dying on the 1st of May, 1986.

  Decades after the originals went out of print, publishers returned to the d'Aulaires' work. In 2005, New York Review Books reissued Norse Gods and Giants under the title d'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths, printing it carefully to preserve the vibrant color and texture of the original lithographs. The novelist Michael Chabon contributed the foreword. The reissue's immediate popularity led NYRB to bring back d'Aulaires' Trolls in 2006 and The Terrible Troll Bird shortly after.

  In 2007, Animals Everywhere was reissued as d'Aulaires' Book of Animals. Italian publisher Donzelli Editori brought out smaller-format Italian editions of both the Norse Myths and the Trolls books in 2007 and 2008. Several titles also appeared in Korean and Japanese editions. The d'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths found a second life in audio form as well, narrated by Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier, Kathleen Turner, and Matthew Broderick. In 2016, University of Minnesota Press reissued East of the Sun and West of the Moon under the title d'Aulaires' Book of Norwegian Folktales, returning the couple's earliest Norwegian storytelling impulses to a new generation of readers.