Illustrator Nominee: USA

David Wiesner
United States of America, Author

It became clear to me that this [picturebook art] was what I loved to do – this was the art I wanted to create.

– David Wiesner

David Wiesner has indeed lived up to his college dream. Since then, in a career spanning more than 27 years, Wiesner has illustrated over 20 books, and is only the second person to win three times the USA's distinguished award for illustration, the Caldecott Medal: in 1992 for Tuesday, in 2002 for The Three Pigs and for Flotsam in 2007.

Born in 1956 in suburban New Jersey, Wiesner attended the Rhode Island School of Design. After graduation, he illustrated textbooks and children's books. His first solo book was Free Fall, published in 1988.This was the beginning of a number of wordless picturebooks created by Wiesner; its dreamscape effect in which images are constantly transformed marked Wiesner as a distinctive and challenging picturebook artist who constantly surprises readers with the originality of each book he produces. Unusual perspective and cinematic effects characterise his work; his first Caldecott Medal book, Tuesday, visually describes what happened when frogs, squatting on lily pads, suddenly fell from the sky into a town. This, he seems to imply, is not as bizarre as it appears, subtly provoking questions about how normality might be perceived.

Wiesner spends several years working on each book, becoming completely absorbed by it. Watercolour is his favoured medium, although in The Three Pigs he employs a variety of styles and media – watercolour, gouache, coloured inks and pencil – to create the playful habitat of a traditional tale from which his porcine characters escape. Collapsing the conventions of story and challenging his readers to enter into a metafictive world, The Three Pigs yet manages to remain accessible and without any hint of condescension to its readers.

In Flotsam, his most recent book, he returns to a motif of earlier work, that of melding a very real world with surreal imaginings. Here, a camera found on a beach reveals a strange underwater world and provides a link with a very realistic past for a young viewer.

As well as his Caldecott Medals and Honor Book recommendations, Wiesner's work has been recognised with many other awards, and has been published in many countries.