SOURCE CITATION
"Lois (Jane) Ehlert." Major Authors and Illustrators for Children and Young Adults, 2nd ed., 8 vols. Gale Group, 2002. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007.
Photograph provided by Harcourt, Inc.

BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Lois Ehlert has used her talent as an illustrator to entertain and educate children since beginning her career in the early 1960s. In the mid-1980s she also began writing her own texts, creating imaginative works about birds, flowers, the alphabet, and other favorite subjects. Her 1989 work Color Zoo was named a Caldecott Honor Book in 1989, and a year later her bold illustrations, with their bright colors and clear, crisp shapes, helped Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault's Chicka Chicka Boom Boom win a Boston Globe/Horn Book Honor award. In an article for Horn Book Ehlert discussed her attraction to picture books and described her work: "I didn't want to be gimmicky; I wanted to distill, to get the essence of what it was that was so exciting. I hope I'm still exploring that idea. I don't see any sense in creating books otherwise. I get a lot of joy out of it."

As a child, Ehlert received both the encouragement and the environment to develop an interest in art. Her mother, who liked to sew, supplied her with vividly colored scraps of cloth, and her father gave her wood from his woodworking projects. They also provided her with a place to work by setting up a card table in a little room in their home. Ehlert spent a great deal of time at the table, both as a small child and through high school, working on projects that helped her to develop her talent. Finally she sent some of her work to the Layton School of Art and received a scholarship there. After taking the table with her to Layton, she made it into a drawing table by placing a wooden bread board on top of it and then giving the board a slant by propping a tin can underneath it. The table has traveled with her throughout her adult career. "It's got holes drilled in it and ink slopped on it and cuts from razor blades," she admitted in Horn Book, "but I still use it."

After graduating from art school in 1957, Ehlert did graphic design work and illustrated some children's books. Because she couldn't approve the final color selections for her illustrations when her book projects went to the printer, working on picture books was frustrating. Although she moved her attention to graphic design projects, her friends urged her to go back to illustrating children's books. "I began to see an emphasis on graphics in picture books," she later explained in Horn Book, "and I thought that the time might be right for my work. I could see that there was a lot more care being taken in the production of children's books."

After providing artwork for numerous picture books written by others, Ehlert decided to try her hand illustrating a text of her own. While working as a freelance graphic designer, she created Growing Vegetable Soup, a book that combines pictures and words to show the steps involved in growing a vegetable garden. Then she wrote and illustrated Planting a Rainbow, which tells the story of a mother and a child who cultivate a flower garden. Both books reflect Ehlert's passion for bold colors, which Andrea Barnet described in the New York Times Book Review as "tropical, electric and hot--the grape purples and sizzling pinks children tend to choose when they paint. Often she pairs complementary hues . . . to startling effect, giving her illustrations a vibrant op-art feel, a visual shimmer that makes them jump off the page."

After her initial success, Ehlert found new ways to design books by using such eye-catching techniques as cutting holes in the pages and using different combinations of light and dark colors in the illustrations. She made use of these new techniques in Color Zoo, as she introduces children to colors and geometrical figures through the use of different-shaped holes cut in sturdy paper and placed on top of a design. Each new cut-out shape--circle, square, triangle--is decorated with the features of different animals which make readers think of the whole figure as a tiger, then a mouse, and then a fox. Ehlert repeats this routine with two more sets of shapes and ends Color Zoo with a summary of all of the shapes and colors used in the book.

In creating her illustrations, Ehlert uses a technique called collage, in which small pieces of paper or fabric are positioned on a background and then pasted in place. She explained the process on the Harcourt Web site: "Sometimes I paint white paper with watercolor washes and then cut up the paper, and sometimes I use paper with just one tone or texture. I usually start out by making a dummy book with sketches. That way I can figure out what I want to illustrate on each page. Once I get that figured out, I start to really research my subject. . . . After I decide what to illustrate, I start cutting out each little piece and gluing it on a board." Ehlert sometimes adds "found" objects such as seeds, string, ribbon, twigs, and even bottle caps, making the process a rather untidy but fun undertaking. Her fans can see the chaos for themselves in Under My Nose, a 1996 work in which Ehlert describes her life as a creative artist.

For Feathers for Lunch Ehlert's collages tell the story of a hungry cat at mealtime that chases after a dozen birds. A bell hung on the cat's collar warns the birds of his presence. Ehlert's artwork is accompanied by a rhyming text, a list of the birds presented, and printed representations of their calls. In order to make the book both educational and attractive, she presents the birds in natural settings, with flowers that blend with the birds' actual colors. Since she wanted to make sure her collages of the birds were the right colors and sizes, she checked them against the skins of birds kept at the Field Museum in Chicago.

Ehlert wanted to make life-size pictures of the birds for the pages of Feathers for Lunch, but that meant that she also would have had to make a life-sized cat. Instead of trying to make such a big book, she opted to show only parts of the cat on certain pages and to replace him entirely with the "JINGLE JINGLE" of his bell on others. Such practice is routine in Ehlert's books. "If I say something with words, I don't need to describe it with the art, and vice versa," she explained in Horn Book. "I really use typography as just another design form, another element of the art."

In Fish Eyes Ehlert uses the patterns and shapes of sea creatures to teach kids about arithmetic. Holes cut in the pages encourage youngsters to touch the book while they learn about numbers by counting fish. Ehlert also puts black type on blue pages, hoping children will find the subtle, hidden text. She explained in Horn Book: "I purposely didn't want that design element to be dominant because I already had a dominant theme. So I worked on my layout, and then I stood in front of a full-length mirror to see how close I had to come to the mirror before I could read that second line. I wanted the type to be a surprise to a child discovering it. I try to work on a lot of different levels in every book. Some things are more successful than others." Ehlert achieved her goal in the opinion of Barnet, who noted that Fish Eyes has "enough novelty to hold a child's interest, and enough complexity to sustain repeated readings."

Folk tales have long fascinated Ehlert, and several of her books are adaptations of traditional stories she collected during her travels in Mexico and Central America. In each of these books, which include Cuckoo: A Mexican Folktale/Cucú: Un cuento folkórico mexicana and Moon Rope: A Peruvian Folktale / Un lazo a la luna: una layenda peruana, she combines elements of the folk art native to the story's location. The imaginative approach of each of these books prompted a Publishers Weekly contributor to quip: "Sombreros off to this innovative artist for yet another eye-catching work." In Cuckoo, for example, Ehlert fashions birds with jointed limbs that mimic Mexican toys, and the style of the book is inspired by a Mexican festival, with its colorful tissue-paper banners and streamers. And the simple rhymes of Market Day: A Story Told with Folk Art are accompanied by illustrations inspired by the folk art of South America, China, and Africa and described in a key located at the back of the book. Booklist contributor GraceAnne A. DeCandido noted that the talented Ehlert "creat(es) coherent and eye-filling tableaux from a wide variety of articles and materials."

Animals often take center stage in Ehlert's books, such as Nuts to You!, in which a determined squirrel moves from ground to bird feeder to windowsill, and even into a young child's home in its search for food. Featuring a die-cut cover designed to represent the squirrel's hole, Nuts to You! has an engaging text that Horn Book contributor Ellen Fader dubbed "a fast-paced romp" enhanced by Ehlert's "usual inventive sense of style." Top Cat tells a familiar tale: that of an older cat who awakens one day to find a frisky young kitten sharing its home. "Ehlert's rhymed couplets accurately describe the common--often naughty--habits of house cats," observed a reviewer in Publishers Weekly, while her "distinctive collages . . . are sure to tickle funny bones," in the opinion of Linda Perkins in Booklist.

Because many of her books are about aspects of everyday life--such as butterflies or growing a vegetable or flower garden--Ehlert does research to ensure that her illustrations and text reflect reality. Along the way she picks up lots of interesting facts about her subject, which she includes in the back of the book for older readers. Although Ehlert wants children to learn from her books, she does not think of herself as an educator. "It's like being a grandmother in a way--setting down something that might, if I'm lucky, be remembered after I'm gone," she admitted in Horn Book. "And also to communicate what I think is important. Look for those birds! Plant a garden or a tree! They are very homely, ordinary subjects--yet spiritual."

UPDATES
June 6, 2006: Ehlert won the 2006 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for her picture book Leaf Man. Source: The Horn Book, www.hbook.com, June 22, 2006.

PERSONAL INFORMATION
Born November 9, 1934, in Beaver Dam, WI; daughter of Harry and Gladys (Grace) Ehlert; married John Reiss, 1967 (separated, 1977). Avocation: Collecting folk art and primitive art. Education: Layton School of Art, B.F.A., 1957; graduate study at University of Wisconsin, 1959. Memberships: American Institute of Graphic Arts; Society of Illustrators. Addresses: Home--Milwaukee, WI. Office--c/o Author Mail, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 525 B St., Suite 1900, San Diego, CA 92101.

CAREER
Writer and illustrator. Layton School of Art Junior School, Milwaukee, WI, teacher; John Higgs Studio, Milwaukee, layout and production assistant; Jacobs-Keelan Studio, Milwaukee, layout and design illustrator; freelance illustrator and designer, 1962--. Has also designed toys and games for children, a series of basic art books, banners, posters, and brochures, and sets for the Moppet Players (children's theater). Exhibitions: Creativity on Paper Show, New York, NY, 1964; Society of Illustrators, 1971, 1989, and 1990; International Children's Book Exhibit, Bologna, Italy, 1979; Exhibition of Original Art, Chicago Art Institute, Chicago, IL, 1996.