Evaline Ness (1911-1986)

Evaline Ness was born Evaline Michelow on April 24, 1911, in Union City, Ohio. Her father was Albert Michelow (1867-1932), a Swedish-born brickmason. Her mother was Myrtle W. (Carter) Michelow (1875-1958), a dressmaker born in Virginia. Evaline's parents were married in 1898 in North Carolina. They had four children, Rudolph, Eloise, Josephine, and Evaline, the youngest. Maybe the title character in Evaline's book Josefina February (1963), shown below, was named for her older sister.

The Michelow family lived in North Carolina, Virginia, and Ohio before settling in Pontiac, Michigan, when Evaline was a young child. She graduated from Pontiac Central High School in 1929. In 1930, at age eighteen, she lived with her parents in Pontiac and worked as a librarian at the city public library. In 1931-1932, she studied to be a librarian at Ball State Teachers College, now Ball State University, in Muncie, Indiana, thus her connection to the Hoosier State. While in Muncie, she was also a fashion model. After leaving Ball State, Evaline Michelow studied at the Chicago Art Institute from 1933 to 1935. She worked as a fashion illustrator throughout the 1930s.

Evaline Michelow was married five times and was known by her second husband's surname. Her first marriage was to a man named McAndrews. He seems to have disappeared from the public record. They were divorced sometime in the 1930s. Her second husband was Eliott Ness (1903-1957) of Untouchables fame, whom she met on a train traveling between Chicago and New York. Both were married at the time but got divorced soon enough, he just in time apparently to marry her. (Eliot Ness' divorce came in 1939 in Florida. He and Evaline were married in late October 1939.) The couple lived in Cleveland and Washington, D.C. They divorced in 1945 or 1946 or 1951, but she kept his name. There were three other husbands, last of whom was Arnold A. Bayard (1904-1988), an engineer and wine connoisseur. They had homes in New York and Florida. The two lie together--or at least they have headstones next to each other--at Snow Cemetery in Truro, Massachusetts. As you might guess, Evaline Ness was a free spirit. "I don't need a husband all the time," she said. And though children intrigued her and she wrote and illustrated books about them, she never had any of her own.

Evaline Ness was a fashion illustrator, magazine illustrator, commercial artist, painter, and children's book author and illustrator. Her first illustrations for a children's book were for Story of Ophelia by Mary J. Gibbons (1954). Other books which she illustrated include:

• The Bridge by Charlton Ogburn (1957)
• The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope (1958)
• Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell (1960)
• Thistle and Thyme: Tales and Legends from Scotland by Sorche Nic Leodhas (1962)
• A Gift for Sula Sula by Evaline Ness (1963)
• Josefina February by Evaline Ness (1963)
• All in the Morning Early by Sorche Nic Leodhas (1963), a Caldecott Honor Book
• Exactly Alike by Evaline Ness (1964)
• Josie and the Snow by Helen E. Buckley (1964)
• A Pocketful of Cricket by Rebecca Caudill (1964), a Caldecott Honor Book
• The Princess and the Lion by Elizabeth Coatsworth (1964)
• A Double Discovery by Evaline Ness (1965)
• Tom Tit Tot: An English Folk Tale retold by Virginia Haviland (1965), a Caldecott Honor Book
• Favorite Fairy Tales Told in Italy by Virginia Haviland (1965)
• Sam, Bangs and Moonshine by Evaline Ness (1966), for which she won a Caldecott Medal
• Books by Lloyd Alexander, including:
• The Book of Three (1964)
• The Black Cauldron (1965)
• The Castle of Llyr (1965)
• Coll and His White Pig (1965)
• Isle of Mona (1966)
• Taran Wanderer (1967)
• The Truthful Harp (1967)
• The High King (1968)
• Mr. Miacca, an English Folktale by Evaline Ness (1967)
• The Girl and the Goatherd by Evaline Ness (1970)
• Some of the Days of Everett Anderson by Lucille Clifton (1971)
• Everett Anderson's Christmas Coming by Lucille Clifton (1971)
• Amelia Mixed the Mustard and Other Poems (1975)
• Four Rooms from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to Cut Out and Color by Evaline Ness (1977)

The list above is by no means complete.

Evaline Ness had an extraordinary run from 1963 to 1966 during which she won three Caldecott Honors and a Caldecott Medal. She is tied for seventh among winners of the most Caldecott awards.

By 1979, when the Palm Beach Post published a profile of her (Apr. 5, 1979), Evaline was tired of illustrating. Her last book was The Hand-Me-Down Doll by Steven Kroll (1983). Evaline Ness died on August 12, 1986, in Kingston, New York. Her remains were cremated and her ashes scattered. The stone at Snow Cemetery may be only for old time's sake.

Evaline Michelow Ness (1911-1986), her high school yearbook photograph, 1929.

Backdated to February 2, 2022.

Text copyright 2022, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Recent Book on Cartoon Censorship

Today is what I call the International Day of the Cartoonist, meant to honor and remember the cartoonists Wolinski, Cabu, Honoré, Tignous, and Charb, all killed by Islamic terrorists in Paris on this date in 2015. Although Hoosier cartoonists have not faced anything like that, we have had in the past few months an attempt at censorship against one of them, Ken Avidor of Indianapolis. Mr. Avidor's offense against political orthodoxy involves his animated cartoon Unjabbed. Those in power cannot tolerate dissent or difference of opinion, and so Mr. Avidor's cartoon has been censored. The last we heard, Ken Avidor is working on the second episode of Unjabbed.

MIT Press recently published a book on the topic of cartoonists and censorship, Red Lines: Political Cartoons and the Struggle against Censorship. The authors are Cherian George of Hong Kong Baptist University and Sonny Liew, an independent artist based in Singapore. Not surprisingly, there have been attempts to censor or suppress the book, or to categorize it, more or less, as politically unacceptable. See for example "Red Lines' clumsy attempt to decry cartoon censorship ends up defending bigotry" by Caitlin Rosberg on the website The A.V. Club, dated September 7, 2021, here. The point of Caitlin Rosberg's article or review seems to be: "You should not read this book." Or, perhaps: "The authors of this book should be silenced," a curious and ironic conclusion drawn on a book about censorship.

Backdated to January 7, 2022.

Copyright 2022, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Happy New Year!

I have run out of time again this year, and so I will close out 2021 with a simple image of children, drawn by Florence Sarah Winship (1900-1987). Soon, now, it will be time for bed . . .

Happy New Year!

Terence E. Hanley, 2021, 2024.

Christmas Greetings from Riley & Vawter

Christmas Greetings from the Hoosier Poet, James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916), and his illustrator, Will Vawter (1871-1941), from the book Songs of Friendship . . .

and from

Indiana Illustrators &

Hoosier Cartoonists!

Terence E. Hanley, 2021, 2024.

What Old Santa Overheard by Riley & Vawter

"What 'Old Santa' Overheard" by James Whitcomb Riley, illustrated by Will Vawter, from Songs of Friendship:

Terence E. Hanley 2021, 2024.

Paul R. Alexander (1937-2021)

Science fiction artist Paul R. Alexander has died. I wrote about him previously on this blog, on November 17, 2011. (Click here to read what I wrote.) I showed some of Mr. Alexander's artwork when I last wrote of him, but any small part is inadequate for lovers of art and illustration. Paul Alexander was a surpassingly good artist.

He was born on September 3, 1937, in Richmond, Indiana, son of Fred and Ora Olive Alexander. He graduated from Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, in 1967. Although he lived and worked on the East Coast, Mr. Alexander returned to the Midwest later in life, living, working, attending church, and enjoying his hobbies and friends in Greenville, Ohio. That is where he died, too, on June 14, 2021, at age eighty-three. One new bit of information on him: Paul Alexander was a model train enthusiast. Called a "gadget artist" by Vincent Di Fate, Mr. Alexander knew his gadgets, from miniature trains to immense spacefaring vehicles of the imagination.

Paul Alexander's first work listed in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDb) is his cover for The Eyes of Heisenberg by Frank Herbert, published forty-five years ago this month, in December 1976. His last came at around the turn of the current century, in the period 1998-2001. In addition to covers and interior art for science fiction magazines and books, Mr. Alexander created illustrations for Encyclopedia Britannica, Institutions Magazine, and the New Jersey Telephone Company. He also did designs for the packaging for Robotix toys made by Milton Bradley. Click here to see more.

There has been so much sadness these past few years, especially in the last two. Now we have more sadness. But at least we also have the undying work of Paul Alexander.

To read an obituary in the science fiction magazine Locus, click here.

Text copyright 2021, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Sharon Kane (1932-2021)

Sharon Katherine Smith Koester Kane has died. Known for her wonderfully made drawings of babies, toddlers, young children, and teenagers, she began her career as a published artist, illustrator, and cartoonist while she was herself still a child. Her picture-making went on for the next eighty years, ending only last month with her death.

Sharon Katherine Smith was born on February 18, 1932, in South Bend, Indiana, to Stuyvesant C. Smith, an engineer at Bendix Aviation, and Katherine Eunice (Young) Smith, also an artist and writer. "Ever since I can remember I have been drawing," Sharon Smith wrote in 1950, "mostly pictures of children." She had her first published drawing in Children's Activities Magazine (now Highlights For Children) when she was nine years old. Later she had her work published in Scholastic and Seventeen and became a regular contributor to Child Life and The Christian Science Monitor. But it was for her children's books that she is remembered so well today.

As a student at Mishawaka High School, Sharon Smith wrote and illustrated a humorous teen advice column for the school newspaper, the Alltold. Her mother encouraged her to submit her cartoons to the South Bend Tribune. "Atomic Teens," printed on the newspaper's teen page, was the result. In May 1950, McNaught Syndicate picked up the teenaged artist's feature, renaming it "Buttons an' Beaux" for national syndication. "Buttons an' Beaux" ran in newspapers until 1952. The popular song "Buttons and Bows" had won an Academy Award for best song in 1948. The punning title of Sharon's comic panel would have capitalized on the popularity of the song.

Sharon Smith attended Bradley University and graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1954. The following year she married George C. Koester. While living with her husband in Seattle, she did freelance artwork as well as design work for a children's program on a local television station. The young couple spent two years in Seattle. In 1957, when she was just twenty-five years old, Sharon had her first book published. Entitled Where Are You Going Today?, it had been submitted to its publisher by Sharon's mother without her knowledge. More than two dozen children's books followed, her last being Kitty & Me from 2014.

Sharon Smith was married and divorced twice. Her second husband was Hawaiian historian and author Herbert "Herb" Kawainui Kāne (1928-2011). The late Mr. Kāne was an extraordinary artist and illustrator in his own right.

Sharon Kane lived in Glencoe, Illinois, and Plano, Texas. She died on November 3, 2021, at age eighty-nine. Her art is in the collections of the Northern Indiana Historical Society and the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco. She also created a mural in the Bloomingdale Public Library in Illinois. The scene is a woodland scene, perhaps recalling her childhood in Mishawaka. "It was a rural life," she remembered, "with hills and woodland and wide open spaces." These are the things we remember of our Hoosier homes.

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To read more on Sharon Smith Kane, see "Sharon Smith Kane, February 18, 1932-November 3, 2021" by Andrew Farago on the website of The Comics Journal, dated December 13, 2021, by clicking here.

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I have pictures from just one of Sharon Smith Kane's books to show today. These are from Tie My Shoe by Helen Wing (1964). The interior drawings shown here are two of my favorites and two of the best from the book, I think. These and other drawings made by women artists show just how well women depict children, much better, in my opinion, than the average male artist. Men tend to draw children as miniature adults, whereas women see and understand and can draw the essential childness of children. Anyway, please enjoy these pictures and join me in remembering the life and work of Sharon Smith Kane.

Updated on July 17, 2022.

Original text copyright 2021, 2024 Terence E. Hanley