Stephen Gammell Biography

Stephen Gammell – American illustrator 1943-

Stephen Gammell’s distinctive illustra­tions is imbued with emotion. Every color and change of value creates mood. Child and adult alike will find themselves shivering, chilled by his illustrations in Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (1981). His colored ­pencil drawings in the Caldecott Medal-win­ning Song and Dance Man (1988) emanate warmth and joy. Together with Karen Acker­man’s prose, they set one’s feet tapping. In the Caldecott Honor Book Where the Buffaloes Be­gin (1981), one feels the vastness of the Western plains, the earth shuddering underneath the heavy hooves of the buffaloes. Gammell’s illus­trations capture the emotional impact of a story: “The first time I read a manuscript I can imme­diately tell whether I want to illustrate it. I may not know how the illustrations will look, but I get a certain feeling for the text. I respond to the words, and, if I can respond to a story, I can il­lustrate it.”

Stephen Gammell was reared in Des Moines, Iowa. His father, an art editor for consumer magazines, brought home a variety of periodi­cals, and Gammell was impressed with the illus­trations, cutting them up to make scrapbooks. His father also gave him pencils and stacks of paper, which Gammell has said were better than any toys. “My father was very encouraging. He would help me draw, supply the paper and pen­cils, but he would never coach me or tell me how to work. I picked up the interest on my own; my parents never pushed me. It got me through ele­mentary school. If you could draw, the big kids were more hesitant about beating you up. I tried to make this work for me.”

Gammell continued drawing on his own while attending high school and college in Iowa. In the late 1960s, in Minneapolis, he began drawing small ads for friends’ neighborhood businesses. While his commercial freelance work expanded, he became interested in children’s book illustration. His first book illustration con­tract was for A Nutty Business (1973), written by Ida Chittum. Gammell will do research for sto­ries only if absolutely necessary, preferring to draw directly from his own imagination. He be­lieves that trusting his own feelings and imagi­nation results in more expressive drawings. “I am inspired by a text which gives me freedom to interpret. I don’t like being tied to a specific his­torical time period, style of architecture or cos­tume. I enjoy elements of fantasy in a story and turn down anything that is too literal.” In the rollicking The Relatives Came (1985), written by Cynthia Rylant, Gammell’s free interpreta­tion communicates both the exuberance and ex­haustion of a family reunion.

Stephen Gammell and his wife, Linda, make their home in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he enjoys solitude and works in his studio every day. Al­though he has authored several of his own sto­ries, he has found writing terribly difficult. “I think of myself as an artist — admittedly a basic term that can mean almost anything. One of the forms my art takes is book illustrations…. In a deep sense, I am my work — what you see on the page is really me.”

M.B.B.

Source: Children’s Books and their Creators, Anita Silvey.

Stephen Gammell Bibliography