One of the Ten Lectures on David Wiesner: The Birth of a Caldecott Medal Winner

Today I’m going to talk about David Wies­ner, a uni­ver­sal­ly rec­og­nized mas­ter of word­less books. Let’s start with his upbring­ing.

This Amer­i­can pic­ture book mas­ter has many fans in Chi­na. His most pop­u­lar work is prob­a­bly *Tues­day*, and many peo­ple also love his *Secrets of the Sea*, *The Three Lit­tle Pigs*, and *Dream Fac­to­ry No. 7*. What impress­es peo­ple most about him is his excep­tion­al abil­i­ty to tell sto­ries through illus­tra­tions. Half of his self-illus­trat­ed works either have no words at all or only a few sim­ple words; you can basi­cal­ly under­stand the sto­ry just by look­ing at the pic­tures. This does­n’t mean his sto­ries are sim­ple; in fact, they are usu­al­ly quite com­plex and most­ly fan­tas­ti­cal, often even sci­ence fic­tion. There­fore, to tru­ly under­stand his sto­ries, read­ers need to mas­ter cer­tain tech­niques and have enough patience, gen­er­al­ly read­ing them sev­er­al times.

Because of his excep­tion­al­ly rich imag­i­na­tion and chal­leng­ing read­ing style, his works are beloved not only by chil­dren in the Unit­ed States but also by teach­ers and librar­i­ans. From 1989 to 2014, a peri­od of approx­i­mate­ly 25 years, the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion award­ed him three Calde­cott Medals and three Calde­cott Hon­ors. Before him, only anoth­er Amer­i­can pic­ture book mas­ter, Mar­cia Brown, had received three Calde­cott Medals before 1983. Mar­cia Brown passed away in 2015, mean­ing that cur­rent­ly, only David Wies­ner has won three Calde­cott Medals, and at only 70 years old (1956-), his cre­ative out­put is still very high; per­haps he will even win a fourth medal!

David Wies­ner vis­it­ed main­land Chi­na in 2017 (and will be back in Novem­ber 2026!), meet­ing with read­ers in Bei­jing. His sev­er­al events were incred­i­bly pop­u­lar. Peo­ple want­ed to hear the sto­ries behind his cre­ations, and were also eager to learn about his upbring­ing, how he learned to draw, and how he devel­oped such imag­i­na­tive skills. Those who met him in per­son were like­ly par­tic­u­lar­ly struck by his per­haps some­what rigid and metic­u­lous atti­tude. For exam­ple, when asked, “Why are you such a good artist? Is there a secret?” David Wies­ner seemed a lit­tle per­plexed by this ques­tion, say­ing, “I’ve loved draw­ing since I was a child, and I’ve just kept draw­ing and draw­ing. My work involves con­stant­ly draw­ing, that’s all.” Per­haps because he’s so immersed in the process, enjoy­ing it so much, he can’t quite artic­u­late the rea­sons. Per­haps it’s eas­i­er for us, as observers, to under­stand the secret to his suc­cess and good for­tune.

David Wies­ner was born in 1956 in Bridge­wa­ter, New Jer­sey, about 65 kilo­me­ters south­west of New York City and about 30 kilo­me­ters from the ocean. This small town has a pop­u­la­tion of just over 40,000, and its nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment is well-pre­served, sur­round­ed by forests. A large lake lies to the west, and the Lar­i­tan Riv­er flows through it, emp­ty­ing into the sea to the east. When David was born, Bridge­wa­ter had a pop­u­la­tion of less than 30,000, pri­mar­i­ly agri­cul­tur­al. His father, George Wies­ner, was an engi­neer at a large chem­i­cal com­pa­ny. His father left David a design toolk­it, which David still uses; it looks like an antique but is still quite func­tion­al. David Wies­ner is metic­u­lous in his draw­ing and work, exhibit­ing a dis­tinct­ly Ger­man style. Wies­ner is a Ger­man sur­name, so the fam­i­ly is like­ly of Ger­man immi­grant descent.

David Wies­ner was born in the 1950s, dur­ing the post-World War II baby boom in the Unit­ed States, a time when fam­i­lies were more open to hav­ing chil­dren. David was his par­ents’ fifth child with­in ten years, the youngest, with three old­er sis­ters and one old­er broth­er. That era was also a gold­en age for par­ent­ing. After expe­ri­enc­ing two world wars and the Great Depres­sion, many Amer­i­can intel­lec­tu­al fam­i­lies longed for a rur­al lifestyle and moved to more rur­al areas, hop­ing to bring their chil­dren clos­er to nature. They were also will­ing to invest heav­i­ly in their chil­dren’s intel­lec­tu­al and emo­tion­al well-being; toys and chil­dren’s books were abun­dant at that time, and Amer­i­can chil­dren born and raised in the 1950s and 60s were gen­er­al­ly exposed to a large num­ber of chil­dren’s books. As the youngest in the Wies­ner fam­i­ly, David had access to all the good things his old­er sib­lings used, played with, and read. For exam­ple, his old­er sis­ter and broth­er loved to draw, and he used their art sup­plies, con­tin­u­ing to use them even after they grew up and left home. More­over, after they left home, the sec­ond-floor bed­room was his exclu­sive use. His father even brought home a very pro­fes­sion­al oak design and draw­ing table to his bed­room, turn­ing the bed­room into his paint­ing stu­dio.

He loved draw­ing from a young age. Despite being an engi­neer’s fam­i­ly, their home had a dis­tinct­ly artis­tic atmos­phere. His old­er sis­ter and broth­er loved to draw, and his sec­ond sis­ter lat­er stud­ied opera; in that sense, the fam­i­ly was more like an artis­tic one. How­ev­er, their learn­ing to draw was­n’t entire­ly self-taught; in those days, they main­ly learned from tele­vi­sion. Back then, there was a fif­teen-minute tele­vi­sion pro­gram every Sat­ur­day morn­ing where a cool-look­ing man named Jon Gnagy taught view­ers how to draw. The Wies­ner chil­dren would sit in front of the tele­vi­sion, set­ting out their draw­ing paper and art sup­plies, and copy­ing Jon Gnagy’s draw­ings. David Wies­ner was the most dili­gent; he fol­lowed along for sev­er­al years, faith­ful­ly com­plet­ing every accom­pa­ny­ing exer­cise. Jon Gnagy would casu­al­ly nar­rate the sto­ries that might unfold in his draw­ings, which must have had a pro­found influ­ence on David Wies­ner’s lat­er fas­ci­na­tion with sto­ry­telling through pic­tures.

How­ev­er, half of David Wies­ner’s ear­ly art edu­ca­tion can be attrib­uted to his liv­ing envi­ron­ment. Every­where he went, there were mead­ows, bush­es, woods, streams, and swamps. The adults in the com­mu­ni­ty encour­aged chil­dren to play out­doors, and the chil­dren eas­i­ly formed play­mates. The younger chil­dren fol­lowed the old­er ones, and as they grew up, they began to lead the younger ones in play. Most of the games were invent­ed by them­selves, and the rules were set by them­selves. They played freely in nature, ful­ly enjoy­ing their bound­less imag­i­na­tion. Lat­er, when a read­er asked David Wies­ner where the fan­tas­ti­cal frog imag­in­ings in *Tues­day* came from, he replied that if read­ers had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to expe­ri­ence his dai­ly games in the woods and wet­lands of New Jer­sey as a child, it would­n’t be hard to under­stand; those imag­in­ings were almost a nat­ur­al and real part of his child­hood.

Those chil­dren were close to nature on one hand, and deeply influ­enced by pop­u­lar sci­ence fic­tion cul­ture on the oth­er, with almost all of them fas­ci­nat­ed by the imag­i­na­tion of aliens and UFOs. When David was about 13 years old, he saw Kubrick­’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” in the cin­e­ma and was com­plete­ly blown away. The film’s themes, imag­i­na­tion, and some clas­sic scenes had a pro­found influ­ence on him, and many of his lat­er pic­ture books pay homage to the film. For exam­ple, the most obvi­ous exam­ple is the cov­er of “The Secret of the Sea,” which fea­tures the intel­li­gent com­put­er’s cam­era flash­ing red light from the movie!

As a child, David Wies­ner was a qui­et and reserved boy, seem­ing­ly lack­ing con­fi­dence, until high school when he grad­u­al­ly devel­oped a stronger sense of self-con­fi­dence. This stemmed from two main fac­tors: first­ly, his ath­let­ic ability—he was a key play­er on the school’s bas­ket­ball team, a skill par­tic­u­lar­ly admired by girls in the US; and sec­ond­ly, his tal­ent for drawing—he was the class artist, and every­one called him “that kid who can draw.” He was a well-round­ed indi­vid­ual, much like Antho­ny Browne. How­ev­er, in the Amer­i­can high school cul­ture, bas­ket­ball play­ers are often seen as very mas­cu­line and man­ly, while draw­ing is more of a girly activ­i­ty. Well, David Wies­ner loved both. But some­times there were con­flicts. For exam­ple, he had to train for a game, while also orga­niz­ing a trip to the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) in New York for an art exhi­bi­tion. He could­n’t have it all. What to do? After much hes­i­ta­tion, David Wies­ner final­ly chose to go to the exhi­bi­tion. At MoMA, he was com­plete­ly awestruck by Picas­so’s *Guer­ni­ca* and Dal­i’s *The Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry*! This choice almost fore­shad­owed the course of his life.

So when this boy from the coun­try­side of New Jer­sey heard about the pres­ti­gious Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), he imme­di­ate­ly decid­ed it was his dream. In 1974, he enrolled at RISD, where he received tute­lage from renowned teach­ers Tom Sculls and David Macaulay. David Macaulay, ten years his senior, was also a mas­ter chil­dren’s book illus­tra­tor and won the Calde­cott Medal in 1991. At that time, anoth­er young man named Chris Van All­berg was also pur­su­ing his mas­ter’s degree there; All­berg lat­er won two Calde­cott Medals and one Calde­cott Hon­or. Just imag­ine how strong the Calde­cott Medal atmos­phere was at that school!

David Wies­ner’s life tra­jec­to­ry can tru­ly be described as incred­i­bly for­tu­nate. He was engrossed in draw­ing dur­ing his uni­ver­si­ty years, not giv­ing much thought to his future career. Dur­ing his junior year, the art direc­tor of the renowned chil­dren’s mag­a­zine *The Crick­et* vis­it­ed the school. The art direc­tor admired David’s draw­ing style and com­mis­sioned him to cre­ate a cov­er for the magazine—a wild, futur­is­tic, and imag­i­na­tive illus­tra­tion that told a sto­ry at a glance, instant­ly spark­ing the read­er’s imag­i­na­tion. This suc­cess­ful expe­ri­ence helped David Wies­ner find his future career path. So, after grad­u­at­ing from uni­ver­si­ty in 1978, David Wies­ner began work­ing as a chil­dren’s book illus­tra­tor. Ini­tial­ly, he main­ly illus­trat­ed oth­er peo­ple’s works, includ­ing chil­dren’s sci­ence fic­tion nov­els by the famous direc­tor Steven Spiel­berg. He also col­lab­o­rat­ed on a pic­ture book with his future wife, Kim Kah­ng (of Kore­an descent). How­ev­er, it was­n’t until 1988, with the pub­li­ca­tion of his first inde­pen­dent­ly cre­at­ed word­less book, *Dream Flight*, that he found his own unique style. This book won the Calde­cott Hon­or in 1989.

Lady Luck smiled upon him again. The Crick­et mag­a­zine com­mis­sioned him once more to draw a cov­er, and this time he cre­at­ed a fan­tas­ti­cal world of frogs. Every­one who saw it was curi­ous: what were the frogs doing? To answer this ques­tion, he cre­at­ed a near­ly word­less book, *Tues­day*, which won the Calde­cott Medal in 1992. One can’t help but think how incred­i­bly for­tu­nate this mas­ter of word­less books was!

——There are many more sto­ries to come, we’ll dis­cuss them in the next episode.