Ellen Raskin

Born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin—a place that went on to inform her fiction over the course of her career—Ellen Raskin grew up during the Great Depression. After attending college at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and majoring in fine art, Raskin began a prolific career as a writer and illustrator of children’s books. Raskin’s own novels include The Westing Game, which won the 1979 American Library Association’s Newberry Medal for the year’s most distinguished children’s book, as well as The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel), Figgs & Phantoms, and The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues. She also wrote and illustrated 12 picture books between 1967 and 1976. Additionally, Raskin is well-known for creating the original cover art for the first edition of Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time. The designer of over a thousand dust jackets throughout her long career as a commercial artist, Raskin’s mystery novels and playful illustrations have delighted young readers for decades. Her satirical work is often rooted in themes of family, mismatched identities, and the search for (or the corruption of) the American Dream. Raskin drew inspiration for her illustrations and her stories from wide-ranging topics and figures such as East Asian art, zoos, sporting events, Vladimir Nabokov, Henri Matisse, William Blake, and Walt Disney’s Fantasia. Raskin died in 1984, at the age of 54, from complications of a connective-tissue disease.