John Thacher Hurd (born March 6, 1949)
[ is an American artist and the creator of children's picture books including ''Mama Don't Allow'' and ''Art Dog''.][
]
Biography
Thacher Hurd was born in Burlington, Vermont
Burlington, officially the City of Burlington, is the List of municipalities in Vermont, most populous city in the U.S. state of Vermont and the county seat, seat of Chittenden County, Vermont, Chittenden County. It is located south of the Can ...
,[ the son of children's book creators Clement Hurd and Edith Thacher Hurd. He has referred in an interview to the "wonderful aura of creativity" surrounding his father and the Vermont farm that was their home.][
Leonard S. Marcus (1997)]
"Meet Clement Hurd"
''Enter the World of Margaret Wise Brown''. HarperCollins Children's. Retrieved 2014-10-01. Apparently citing Marcus's book, ''Dear Genius, The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom''.
Margaret Wise Brown
Margaret Wise Brown (May 23, 1910 – November 13, 1952) was an American writer of children's books, including ''Goodnight Moon'' (1947) and ''The Runaway Bunny'' (1942), both illustrated by Clement Hurd. She has been called "the laureate of the ...
's 1949 '' My World'' is dedicated by Brown to the recently born Thacher. (The original dedication "to Hiram Hurd" was altered just before press to read "to John Thacher Hurd when he comes (he's here)".)
After attending the California College of Arts and Crafts
The California College of the Arts (CCA) is a Private university, private art school in San Francisco, California. It was founded in Berkeley, California in 1907 and moved to a historic estate in Oakland, California in 1922. In 1996, it opened ...
, he turned his talents to picture books. His first book was ''The Old Chair'', published in 1978.
In 2001, Hurd re-colored the re-issued edition of '' My World'', by Margaret Wise Brown
Margaret Wise Brown (May 23, 1910 – November 13, 1952) was an American writer of children's books, including ''Goodnight Moon'' (1947) and ''The Runaway Bunny'' (1942), both illustrated by Clement Hurd. She has been called "the laureate of the ...
and Thacher's father Clement Hurd.[Review of ''My World.'']
''Publishers Weekly'' (2001). In 2008, he used his father's artwork from ''Goodnight Moon
''Goodnight Moon'' is an American Children's literature, children's book written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd. It was published on September 3, 1947, and is a highly acclaimed bedtime story.
This book is the second in ...
'' to produce ''Goodnight Moon 123: A Counting Book''. Hurd's work, as well as that of his father and mother, was featured at the Stamford Museum & Nature Center in the 2004 exhibition "From ''Goodnight Moon'' to ''Art Dog'': The World of Clement, Edith and Thatcher Hurd."
In 2012, Hurd's book ''Zoom City'' inspired the name of the American technology company Zoom Video Communications
Zoom Communications, Inc. (formerly Zoom Video Communications, Inc., commonly shortened to Zoom, and stylized as zoom) is an American communications technology company primarily known for the videoconferencing application Zoom. The company is ...
. ''Zoom City'' was a ''New York Times'' Best Illustrated Book of the Year.
His book together with John Cassidy, ''Watercolor for the Artistically Undiscovered'', originally published in 1992 by Klutz, was reissued in 2017 by The Experiment, a New York publishing house.
Hurd and his wife, Olivia, live in Berkeley, California
Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland, Cali ...
. They have two sons, Manton and Nicholas. In 1983, Thacher and his wife built their own publishing house, Peaceable Kingdom Press, which prints cards and posters from children’s books.
Books
* ''The Old Chair'' (Greenwillow Books, 1978)
* ''The Quiet Evening'' (Greenwillow Books, 1978)
* ''Hobo Dog'' (Scholastic, 1980)
* ''Axle the Freeway Cat'' (Harper & Row, 1981)
* ''Hobo Dog's Christmas Tree'' (Scholastic, 1983)
* ''Mystery on the Docks'' (Harper & Row, 1983)
* ''Hobo Dog in the Ghost Town'' (Scholastic, 1985)
* ''Mama Don't Allow'' (Reading Rainbow Books, 1984)
* ''The Pea Patch Jig'' (Crown, 1986)
* ''Blackberry Ramble'' (Crown, 1989)
* ''Tomato Soup'' (Crown, 1992)
* ''Watercolor for the Artistically Undiscovered'' (Klutz Press, 1992) — with John Cassidy
* ''Art Dog'' (HarperCollins, 1996)
* ''Santa Mouse and the Ratdeer'' (HarperCollins, 1998)
* ''Little Mouse's Birthday Cake'' (HarperCollins, 1992)
* ''Zoom City'' (HarperCollins, 1998)
* ''Cat's Pajamas'' (HarperFestival, 2001)
* ''Moo Cow Kaboom!'' (HarperCollins, 2003)
* ''Sleepy Cadillac: A Bedtime Drive'' (HarperCollins, 2005)
* ''Bad Frogs'' (Candlewick Press, 2009)
* ''The Weaver'' (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2010) — with Elisa Kleven
* ''Bongo Fishing'' (Henry Holt & Co., 2011)
References
External links
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hurd, Thacher
Living people
American children's book illustrators
American children's writers
Writers from Burlington, Vermont
1949 births
Artists from Burlington, Vermont
Artists from Berkeley, California