Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire

Ingri D'Aulaire

Born December 27, 1904 in Kongsberg, Norway

Died October 24, 1980 in Wilton, Connecticut



Edgar Parin D'Aulaire

Born September 30, 1898 in Munich, Germany

Died May 1, 1986 in Georgetown, Connecticut.





The life story of these two artists who became authors and illustrators of children's books has echoes of Rick's bar in Casablanca or of Patrick Leigh Fermor's magnificent A Time of Gifts. Reading of their childhood and education in that tragic and increasingly forgotten interwar period when old empires were still dying and a new modernity just being born, you can capture glimpses of a lost world, a world of cultural interconnection and sophistication bridging narrow national parochialisms.



Follow for a moment, if you will, the many strands of these two world wanderers. Ingri Mortenson was born in Kongsberg, Norway, one of five children in a large and boisterous, outdoorsy family. Her father's work with the Royal Norwegian Silver Mines took the family all over Norway. Ingri was exposed through her family and her travels to a broad array of the myths, legends and folktales of Norway. She pursued her initial art studies in Norway (encouraged by Norway's leading female painter, Harriet Backer). She then took courses of study in the art capitals of Europe in France, Germany and Sweden.



Edgar Parin D'Aulaire was the only son of two artists, Italian artist Gino Parin from an old Huguenot family and American artist Ella D'Aulaire (he took his mother's maiden name when his parents later divorced). He grew up primarily between Switzerland and Munich but with frequent sojourns in Paris, Rome and Florence. He pursued architecture and then art studies in Munich and then art in Paris, including receiving instruction from Henri Matisse.



It was in Munich that D'Aulaire and Mortenson met at art school. Edgar Parin focused his artistic career on painting murals and doing illustrations (fifteen books in Germany and a couple in France). Ingri developed her specialty in portraits (particularly of children) and landscapes. Following their marriage in 1925, the D'Aulaire's lived and travelled throughout Europe and North Africa, spending time studying and exhibiting their works in Paris, Berlin, Oslo and Tunis. It was in this time that their two sons, Ola and Nils were born.



As Ingri D'Aulaire later described it, "Following the principle that every well-bred European has to see America, we went across in 1929. New York proved to be a place of a new beauty and a great inspiration. So we went to Europe again, got our immigration papers, and came back to New York as settlers." As so often has happened in children's literature, Europe's loss was America's gain.



Initially the D'Aulaire's lived in New York City but soon moved out to Connecticut where they ran a farm and pursued their arts. Up until this time, the D'Aulaire's had pursued entirely separate artistic careers. However, one of their new acquaintances in New York, Anne Carroll Moore, a librarian at the New York Public library, made the suggestion that they ought to consider writing and illustrating a children's book.



Again, as related by Ingri D'Aulaire

To begin with we did not think of making children's books. But one day a wise old lady put the idea into our heads to start making our own books for children.



Till then we had been strictly separated in our work, two absolute individuals, but now we found out that we might make a happy combination of Ingri's knowledge of children and children's psychology, and Edgar's dramatic sense.



To begin with we had quite some difficulties. We had each our distinct way of expression and were as different as the countries we came from. We worked hard and quarreled a lot, and after a while we started to forge the I and You and became one unity with two heads, four hands and one handwriting - when working on our children's books. When we paint, we still manage to be ourselves, and we take care to keep this.

As mentioned, Edgar Parin D'Aulaire had illustrated numerous books in Europe and indeed had done four books in the US (including one by Newberry medalist winner, Dhan Gopal Mukerji, Rama, Hero of India) in 1930 after their arrival. 1931 saw the first of what was eventually to be twenty-five husband and wife collaborations. The Magic Rug is the tale of a young boy who discovers that his favorite rug can transport him to its original home in North Africa where he and a young Bedouin girl have many adventures and contest with a wicked magician.



There are several common themes that showed up early in the D'Aulaire's work. In the case of The Magic Rug, they called upon their earlier travels in North Africa and Tunisia in particular and the thousands of sketches they had done at that time. They plundered this body of work to give The Magic Rug a feel of veracity, of being there in an unfamiliar place.



Other elements ran through the body of the D'Aulaire's works. They often spent hundreds to thousands of hours of time researching their subject and then they would spend additional time haunting the locales where their stories took place, following in the footsteps of the people of whom they were writing, in order to obtain a feel for what their subject experienced.



They most often favored large format books which allowed them to use very labor intensive and very traditional artistic techniques. Ingri described their approach in Lee Bennett Hopkins' Pauses.

We may rewrite our text ten and twenty times before we are both satisfied, and hundreds of sketches end in the fireplace before the final drawings are executed. In all our work we have used the old techniques of the artist-lithographer who did all his work by hand instead of using a camera, as most modern lithographers do. First, color drawings are sketched on paper in exactly the size needed. Next they are drawn on stone or zinc. The final color separations are combined on the finished stone; many additional tedious processes are still required to complete one lithograph. One's hand must be absolutely sure of every line, for there is no way to erase or go over lines once they are drawn on stone or zinc.

This depth of knowledge, technique, talent and commitment to their stories yielded a flow of marvelous tales. Most are heavily illustrated, alternating color picture spreads with black and white illustrations. The texts are a delicate balance. They are substantive enough that they lend themselves to a parent reading to a child. At the same time, with familiarity, they are just light enough that they lend themselves to a new reader as well.



The most common subjects of which the D'Aulaire's chose to write were tales about Norway and Scandinavia (such as Ola, East of the Sun and West of the Moon, Wings for Per, Norse Gods and Giants, D'Aulaires' Trolls, etc.) and tales from the history of their adopted country (they both became citizens in the 1930's) such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, Columbus, Pocahontas, Buffalo Bill, and Leif the Lucky.



The impact of the D'Aulaire's books are two-fold. The striking illustrations, vibrant colors and the size of the books make them not just a story to be enjoyed but a book a child can grapple with and become absorbed in. They are engulfing. The second striking thing about the stories is that they communicate a great deal of information sensitively, with a positive frame of mind and without great fanfare. You finish a D'Aulaire book refreshed and strengthened.



Their George Washington has been criticized as a little bit wooden but Abraham Lincoln and Leif the Lucky rival one another as peerless biographies for young children and as examples of their masterful ability to combine art, storytelling and knowledge.



My personal favorites, however, are two books that they produced nearly at the end of their writing careers, the D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths and Norse Gods and Giants. I am especially enamored with the Book of Greek Myths. For a body of knowledge that still remains a critical component of any person's awareness of the world around them and which still functions as a critical key to western literature, the D'Aulaires are a perfect introduction at a young age to tales that are, in their hands as they were in the very beginning, gripping stories.




Picture Books

	Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths by Ingri D'Aulaire & Edgar Parin D'Aulaire Highly Recommended
	D'Aulaires' Book Of Norse Myths by Ingri D'Aulaire & Edgar Parin D'Aulaire & Michael (INT) Chabon Highly Recommended
	D'Aulaires' Book of Animals by Ingri D'Aulaire & Edgar Parin D'Aulaire Suggested
	Too Big by Ingri D'Aulaire & Edgar Parin D'Aulaire Suggested
	Foxie, the Singing Dog by Ingri D'Aulaire & Edgar Parin D'Aulaire Suggested
	The Two Cars by Ingri Mortenson D'Aulaire & Edgar Parin D'Aulaire Suggested
	D'Aulaires' Book of Trolls by Ingri D'Aulaire & Edgar Parin D'Aulaire Suggested

Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire Bibliography



Needle in the Haystack by John Matheson written and illustrated by Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1930

Gao of the Ivory Coast by Katie Seabrook written and illustrated by Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1930

Rama, the Hero of India by Dhan Gopal Mukerji written and illustrated by Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1930

Blood by Hanns H. Ewers written and illustrated by Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1930

The Magic Rug written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1931

Coming of the Dragon Ships by Florence McClurg Everson written and illustrated by Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1931

Leonardo da Vinci by Dmitri Merejkowski written and illustrated by Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1931

Ola written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1932

Children of the Soil by Nora Burglon written and illustrated by Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1932

Ola and Blakken and Line, Sine, Trine written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1933

The Conquest of the Atlantic written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1933

The Lord's Prayer written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1934

Children of the Northlights written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1935

George Washington: A Biography for Children written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1936

East of the Sun and West of the Moon: Twenty-one Norwegian Folktales by Peter Christen Asbjoernsen written and illustrated by Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1938

Abraham Lincoln written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1939

Animals Everywhere written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1940

Leif the Lucky written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1941

The Star Spangled Banner written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1943

Don't Count Your Chicks written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1943

Wings for Per written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1943

Too Big written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1945

Pocahontas written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1946

Nils written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1948

Foxie written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1949

Benjamin Franklin written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1950

Buffalo Bill written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1952

The Two Cars written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1955

Columbus written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1955

The Magic Meadow written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1958

Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1962

Norse Gods and Giants written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1967

D'Aulaires' Trolls written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1972

The Terrible Troll-Bird written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire 1976