William Pène Du Bois papers

1940s-1970s

William Sherman Pène du Bois was an illustrator and award-winning children's author. He was born May 9, 1916 in Nutley, New Jersey, into a family of distinguished painters, stage designers, and architects dating back to the 1700s. His father, Guy Pène du Bois, was an art critic and artist known for his landscapes and portraits. His mother, Florence Sherman, was a successful children's clothing designer. His younger sister, Yvonne, also became a landscape painter.

When "Billy" was eight, his family moved to France where he attended the Lycee Hoche at Versailles and the Lycee de Nice. Pène du Bois excelled in sports, especially tennis, and mathematics. He particularly enjoyed spending time at the French circus, the subject of several of his books. Although he wasn't an avid reader, Pène du Bois was captivated by book illustrations, which he studied.

The Pène du Bois family returned to New Jersey when William was fourteen. After finishing high school, he was accepted, with a scholarship, to the Carnegie Technical School of Architecture. But his college plans dissolved when he sold a book he wrote to pass time during a vacation. The Great Geppy was published before Pène du Bois' nineteenth birthday. College was passed over for a career writing and illustrating children's books. By the time he entered the armed forces at age twenty-five, he had written and illustrated five more children's books.

He spent his army years (1941-1945) with the coast artillery stationed in Bermuda, where he worked as a correspondent for Yank, edited the camp newspaper and illustrated strategic maps and calendars for Bermuda (copies included in the collection).

Over his five-decade career, Pène du Bois wrote and illustrated over twenty-five of his own books and provided illustrations for numerous others, notably works of Jules Verne, Isaac Bashevis Singer and John Steinbeck. He also illustrated many magazine articles and advertisements, including two covers for Town and Country.

He was awarded the American Library Association's 1948 John Newberry Medal (most distinguished American children's book published the previous year) for his book, Twenty-One Balloons, and two Caldecott Honor Awards, for Bear Party and Lion.

Pène du Bois was the founding editor of the Paris Review. He married debutante Jane Bouche in 1943 (divorced) and theatrical designer Willa Kim in 1955. In the 1960s he developed an interest in vintage cars, going to great pains and expense to refurbish a 1931 Brewster Croydon Coupe Rolls-Royce P11. Pène du Bois died of a stroke on February 5, 1993 in Nice, France.

Sources: Contemporary Author Online, Gale, 2003. Retrieved October 10, 2003: http://galenet.galegroup.com/BioRC

Daly, Josette Guevara. Sketches. The Royal Gazette and Colonist Daily (Bermuda), 1944 May 10.