Provensen, Alice and Martin, were a married team of American illustrators and authors of children’s books. The Provensens created more than 40 picture books, including animal stories, collections of poetry, nursery rhymes, religious books, and fairy tales.
The Provensens won the 1984 Caldecott Medal for their illustrations for The Glorious Flight: Across the Channel with Louis Bleriot, July 25, 1909 (1983). The Caldecott Medal is awarded annually to the outstanding picture book by an American. The Provensens also illustrated A Visit to William Blake’s Inn (1981), which won the 1982 Newbery Medal for author Nancy Willard. The Newbery Medal is given annually to the outstanding children’s book by an American.
The Provensens based The Glorious Flight on an actual airplane flight across the English Channel in 1909 by the French aviation pioneer Louis Bleriot. The illustrations vividly portray the flight of the primitive airplane over the channel. Their illustrations for A Visit to William Blake’s Inn capture the book’s setting of London during the late 1700’s.
Martin Elias Provensen was born on July 10, 1916. Alice Twitchell was born on Aug. 14, 1918. Both were born in Chicago. They married in 1944. They each studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and later at branches of the University of California, Martin at the Berkeley campus and Alice at Los Angeles. Both worked in motion-picture animation studies in California. Martin contributed to the Walt Disney animated films Fantasia (1940) and Dumbo (1941). Their first collaboration as children’s illustrators and authors was The Animal Fair (1952), which consists of 22 original stories and poems about the animal world.
Martin Provensen died on March 27, 1987, and Alice temporarily retired from illustration work. She resumed her career with illustrations for The Buck Stops Here: The Presidents of the United States (1990). Her picture book My Fellow Americans: A Family Album (1995) is a collection of more than 500 portraits in text and pictures of famous Americans. Klondike Gold (2005), which Alice wrote and illustrated, is an account of the 1897 gold rush to Yukon in Canada. A Day in the Life of Murphy (2003) is a humorous picture book narrated by a dog. Alice also wrote and illustrated a companion picture book, Murphy in the City (2015). Alice Provensen died on April 23, 2018.
