13 Facts About William Steig

William Steig was the US nominee for the biennial and international Hans Christian Andersen Awards, as both a children's book illustrator in 1982 and a writer in 1988.

William Steig's parents were Polish-Jewish immigrants from Lemberg, Austria-Hungary; both socialists.

William Steig's father, Joseph Steig, was a house painter, and his mother, Laura Ebel Steig, was a seamstress who encouraged his artistic leanings.

William Steig graduated from Townsend Harris High School at 15 but never completed college, though Steig attended three schools, spending two years at City College of New York, three years at the National Academy of Design, and a mere five days at the Yale School of Art before dropping out of each one.

William Steig's first published work appeared in The New Yorker in 1930 as a series of cartoons.

William Steig excelled here as well, and his third book, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, won the Caldecott Medal.

William Steig went on to write more than 30 children's books, including the Doctor De Soto series, and he continued to write into his nineties.

That same year, William Steig received the CINE Golden Eagle Award in Education for the film adaptation of this book.

From 1936 to 1949, William Steig was married to educator and artist Elizabeth Mead William Steig, from whom he was later divorced.

William Steig married his second wife, Kari Homestead, in 1950, and they had a daughter, Margit Laura.

Steig's brother, Irwin, was a journalist and painter, for whom William illustrated two books on poker strategy.

William Steig's brother, Henry, was a jeweler and a writer who played the saxophone and painted.

William Steig died of natural causes in Boston, Massachusetts, on October 3,2003, at the age of 95.