Ellen Raskin (March 13, 1928 – August 8, 1984) was an American children's writer and illustrator. She won the 1979 Newbery Medal for The Westing Game, a mystery novel, and another children's mystery, Figgs & Phantoms, was a Newbery Honor Book in 1975.
In 2012 The Westing Game was ranked number nine all-time among children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal, a monthly with a primarily-U.S. audience.
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Life
Raskin was born in Milwaukee, where she grew up during the Great Depression. She was educated at the University of Wisconsin with a major in fine art.
Raskin was an accomplished graphic artist. She worked in New York City as a commercial artist for about 15 years. Among other things, she designed more than 1000 dust jackets for books, including the first edition of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, the 1963 Newbery Medal winner.
In 1957, she married graphic designer Roy Kuhlman, but they soon divorced. In 1960 she married Dennis Flanagan, editor of Scientific American.
Raskin died at the age of 56 on August 8, 1984, in New York City, as a result of a connective-tissue disease.
Education
At the age of 17, Raskin entered the University of Wisconsin with the intention of majoring in journalism. However, after visiting an art exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago, she changed her major to fine arts.
Works
Children's picture books
Raskin wrote and illustrated twelve picture books, published by Atheneum Books except as noted.
Nothing Ever Happens on My Block, 1967
Silly Songs and Sad, Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1967
Spectacles, 1968
Ghost in a Four-Room Apartment, 1969
And It Rained, 1969
A & The, or, William T. C. Baumgarten Comes to Town, 1970
The World's Greatest Freak Show, 1971
Franklin Stein, 1972
Moe Q. McGlutch, He Smoked Too Much, Parents, 1973
Who, Said Sue, Said Whoo?, 1973
Moose, Goose & Little Nobody, 1976
Twenty-Two, Twenty-Three, 1976
Children’s novels
Raskin wrote four novels, all published by E. P. Dutton.
The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel), 1971
Figgs & Phantoms, 1974
The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues, 1975
The Westing Game, 1978
As illustrator
Raskin also illustrated more than twenty books by other writers.
Happy Christmas: Tales for Boys and Girls, edited by Claire H. Bishop, Ungar, 1956.
The Bound Man and Other Stories, by Ilse Aichinger, transl. by Eric Mosbacher, New York: Noonday Press, 1956.
A Child's Christmas in Wales, by Dylan Thomas (1950); J. M. Dent, 1968.
Mama, I Wish I Was Snow, Child You'd Be Very Cold, by Ruth Krauss, Atheneum, 1962.
Philosophy and History. The Ernst Cassirer Festschrift, ed. Raymond Klibansky and H. J. Paton, 1963. (second edition)
Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, selected by Dwight MacDonald, Crowell, 1965.
We Dickinson's, by Aileen Fisher and Olive Rabe, Atheneum, 1965.
The Jewish Sabbath, by Molly Cone, Crowell, 1966.
Paths of Poetry: Twenty-Five Poets and Their Poems, ed. Louis Untermeyer, Delacorte, 1966.
Songs of Innocence (Volumes 1 & 2), by William Blake (1789, 1794), music and illustrations by Ellen Raskin, Doubleday, 1966.
D. H. Lawrence: Poems Selected for Young People, ed. William Cole, Viking, 1967.
Ellen Grae, by Vera and Bill Cleaver, Lippincott, 1967.
Poems of Robert Herrick, ed. Winfield T. Scott, Crowell, 1967.