Tudor, Tasha

▪ 2009

Starling Burgess 

      American children's book illustrator and author

born Aug. 28, 1915, Boston, Mass.

died June 18, 2008, Marlboro, Vt.

illustrated nearly 100 books, many of which she also wrote; her artwork frequently shows children in old-fashioned clothing enjoying simple activities in pastoral settings, with intricate page borders of flowers and animals. She was a runner-up for the Caldecott Medal in 1945 for Mother Goose (1944) and in 1957 for the counting book 1 Is One (1956) and received the Catholic Library Association's Regina Medal in 1971. Tudor debuted as an author-illustrator with Pumpkin Moonshine (1938). Other books include A Tale for Easter (1941), The Dolls' Christmas (1950), and several books featuring her Corgi dogs, including her final book, Corgiville Christmas (2003). She edited and illustrated anthologies, such as The Tasha Tudor Book of Fairy Tales (1961); provided illustrations for editions of Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses (1947), Clement Clarke Moore's The Night Before Christmas (2002), and other classics; and designed greeting cards and prints. Tudor also wrote The Tasha Tudor Cookbook: Recipes and Reminiscences from Corgi Cottage (1993) and other nonfiction books about the 19th-century lifestyle that she adopted in her New England farmhouse.

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