Louis Slobodkin

Louis Slobodkin (February 19, 1903 – May 8, 1975) was an American sculptor, illustrator, and writer born in Albany, New York. Trained at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, he worked for years as a sculptor before turning to children's books, illustrating Eleanor Estes's The Moffats in 1941 and winning the 1944 Caldecott Medal for his illustrations of James Thurber's Many Moons. Over his career he illustrated roughly ninety books and wrote about fifty of them himself. As an author, he was best known for the Space Ship series, beginning with The Space Ship Under the Apple Tree in 1952 and continuing through The Space Ship Returns to the Apple Tree, Round Trip Space Ship, The Three-Seated Space Ship, and The Space Ship in the Park, gentle science-fiction adventures for young readers built around a boy's friendship with a tiny alien visitor. He also wrote the reference volume Sculpture: Principles and Practice.