Azarian, Mary (1940-…), is an American illustrator and author of children’s books. She won the Caldecott Medal in 1999 for her illustrations for Snowflake Bentley (1998), written by the American author Jacqueline Briggs Martin. The Caldecott Medal is awarded annually to the best picture book by an American.
Snowflake Bentley is a biography of Wilson A. Bentley, a Vermont farmer and amateur photographer of the 1800’s who became the first person to photograph individual snowflakes. Azarian illustrated the story with hand-colored woodcuts. Humorous and beautifully colored woodcuts have been a feature of her style throughout her career.
Azarian earned acclaim for her first book as an author and illustrator, A Farmer’s Alphabet (1981). She created woodcuts of rural scenes to illustrate each letter of the alphabet. Azarian also created another highly praised alphabet book, A Gardener’s Alphabet (2000). She wrote and illustrated The Tale of John Barleycorn, or, From Barley to Beer: A Traditional English Ballad (1982). Azarian adapted the story from a humorous ballad by the famous Scottish poet Robert Burns.
Azarian has illustrated numerous books by other American authors. She began her career as a children’s illustrator with The Wild Flavor (1973) by the American author Marilyn Kluger. Other notable illustrations appear in such picture books as Barn Cat: A Counting Book (1998) by the American author Carol P. Saul and From Dawn till Dusk (2002) by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock.
Mary Schneider was born on Dec. 8, 1940, in Washington, D.C. She married Tomas Azarian, an Armenian American musician, in 1962. She received a B.A. degree from Smith College in 1963. Azarian taught in a one-room schoolhouse in Walden, Vermont, from 1963 to 1967, when she became a free-lance illustrator and printmaker.
