Jerry Pinkney

Biography

Pinkney was born in the Germantown section of Philadelphia in 1939, and began drawing at the age of four. As a child, he had great difficulty with dyslexia in elementary school. However, his love of and talent for drawing was useful in elevating his self-esteem and gaining the attention of his teachers and classmates. In junior high school his work was noticed by cartoonist John Liney, who encouraged him to pursue the career of an artist.

Pinkney concentrated on commercial art at the Dobbins Vocational School as a teen, and was granted a full scholarship to the Philadelphia Museum College of Art, (now University of the Arts) where he met his wife Gloria. Upon graduation, he held a variety of positions in the field of design and illustration, including as a greeting card designer. Eventually he founded Kaleidoscope Studios with fellow artists, and two years later he opened his own Jerry Pinkney Studio and focused on illustrating children’s books.

Pinkney's illustrative work often incorporates African American motifs. His works include Patricia C. McKissack's Goin' Someplace Special, a story of segregation in mid-century South.

Literary works

At a very young age Pinkney became interested in drawing at job he had, he was a newspaper boy and when ever he had a break he would draw. He had two older brothers who enjoyed drawing comics books and photo magazines and he began to follow in their footsteps. Soon he began to realize that he would rather sit and draw instead of doing other things. While in junior high school Pinkney worked at a newsstand and sketched people as they passed by. This is where Pinkney met cartoonist John Liney who encouraged him to draw and exposed him to making a living from drawing. Pinkney went on and graduated from Murrell Dobbins Vocational School and attended Philadelphia Museum College of Art. He later moved to Boston where he worked at a greeting card company and went on to open Kaleidoscope Studio with two other artists. He eventually opened his own studio, Jerry Pinkney Studio, and later moved to New York. Mr. Pinkney has always had an interest in diversity and many of his children’s books celebrate multicultural and African-American themes. Mr. Pinkney still lives in New York and has been an art professor at the University of Delaware, Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and State University of New York at Buffalo. Over the years he has given workshops and been a guest speaker at universities and art schools across the country.

Books illustrated

‡ As an illustrator Pinkney won the annual Caldecott Medal in 2010 for The Lion & the Mouse and he was one of the runners-up five times from 1989 to 2003 (exceeded only by Maurice Sendak). Since 1970 the runner-up works are called Caldecott Honor Books.

In June 2015, Sam and the Tigers: A New Telling of Little Black Sambo, by Julius Lester and Pinkney, was named runner-up for the 2016 Phoenix Picture Book Award. The award recognizes the best English-language children's picture book that did not win a major award when it was published twenty years earlier.

United States postage stamps

In 1977, the United States Postal Service commissioned Pinkney to create the first nine postage stamps for the Black Heritage stamp series. His designs featured images of Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr., Benjamin Banneker, Whitney Young, Jackie Robinson, Scott Joplin, Carter Woodson, Mary McLeod Bethune and Sojourner Truth.

Plays

Quotes

"Books give me a great feeling of personal and artistic satisfaction. When I'm working on a book I wish the phone would never ring. I love doing it. My satisfaction comes from the actual marks on the paper, and when it sings, it's magic."

"I wanted to show that an African-American artist could make it in this country on a national level in the graphic arts. I want to be a strong role model for my family and for other African Americans."