Peter Parnall is an American artist who has written or illustrated over 80
children's books about animals and nature. I am not yet familiar with the volumes,
but I am quite fond of the covers' airy and delicate pen and ink cover illustrations
and wanted to share them. I discovered these beauties at www.pagebooks.net.
Here is a bit of bio as told by Parnall himself in an interview on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website:
"I went to Cornell in 1954 because I wanted to be a veterinarian, but I had a little too much fun.
Got pneumonia when I took my mid-terms in freshman year and flunked them all. After I left Cornell,
I went out West to train horses. Came my father’s birthday, so I drew him a picture of a horse.
He hung it on his wall and told me I should go back to school and be an artist. So I got in the car
and went down to the Pratt Institute with the picture of the horse. They’d already given the entrance exam
so I saw the dean of admissions and told him, “You might as well let me in because I’m coming here anyway next year.
Why waste a year of my time?” I went there for two years. Got a little bored, so I quit. The first job
I got was art director of a little magazine called Travel Magazine. Meanwhile, I had a freelance business
in advertising. Advertising was fun. Great fun. My clients included Mr. Potato Head, G.I. Joe, restaurants,
and all kinds of things. But later I got tired of convincing people they should buy stuff they don’t need."
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