Shulevitz, Uri (1935-…), a children’s book illustrator and author, won the 1969 Caldecott Medal for his illustrations for The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship. The book is based on a Russian folk tale. The Caldecott Medal is awarded annually for the most distinguished children’s picture book published in the previous year.
Shulevitz wrote and illustrated his first children’s book, The Moon in My Room, in 1963. He also wrote and illustrated Rain Rain Rivers (1969), The Treasure (1979), The Golden Goose (1995), Snow (1998) and its sequel Dusk (2013), The Travels of Benjamin of Tudela: Through Three Continents in the Twelfth Century (2005), So Sleepy Story (2006), When I Wore My Sailor Suit (2009), and Troto and the Trucks (2015). In addition, Shulevitz has illustrated a number of books by other authors. He discussed his philosophy of the relationship between illustrations and text in Writing with Pictures (1985).
Shulevitz was born on Feb. 27, 1935, in Warsaw, Poland. He fled Poland with his family in 1939, soon after the German invasion of the country at the start of World War II. After wandering through Europe, the family settled in Paris in 1947. His book How I Learned Geography (2008) is based on his childhood memories of wartime. Shulevitz lived in Israel from 1949 to 1959, when he moved to New York City.
