Uri Shulevitz

Uri Shulevitz’s (1935-2025) children’s books have garnered 3 Caldecott Honors and one Caldecott Medal. He was born in Warsaw, Poland, where he began drawing at the age of three and never stopped. The Warsaw blitz occurred when he was four years old, and the Shulevitz family fled. For eight years they were wanderers, arriving, eventually, in Paris in 1947. At thirteen, Shulevitz won first prize in an all-elementary-school drawing competition in Paris’s 20th district. In 1949, the family moved to Israel, where he studied at the Art Institute of Tel Aviv. At fifteen, he was the youngest to exhibit in a group drawing show at the Tel Aviv Museum. Uri moved to New York City when he was 24 and he studied painting at Brooklyn Museum Art School . Besides his many picture book honors, Uri also wrote the instructional guide Writing with Pictures: How to Write and Illustrate Children’s Books.

It is with great sadness that we mark the passing of the amazing artist Uri Shulevitz.

On a personal note, I would add that it has been a great honor representing Uri’s original artwork for the past decade, and he became a dear friend. Uri was a kind, gentle man who rose above his difficult childhood, and turned his memories into the highest level of hope filled artistic creation.

I cherish our time together and I loved visiting him in his New York City Greenwich Village walk up where the bedroom, bath, and kitchen were overflowing with his paintings, illustrations and sculptures. Uri moved in when the area was filled with struggling artists and musicians (he lived above the Bottom Line Music Club for many years when the likes of Patti Smith, Prince, Miles Davis, Linda Ronstadt, and Ringo Starr were regulars), until he moved a few blocks away to a West Village walk-up. The neighborhood gentrified but Uri’s apartment just got more cluttered. Even in his mid-80’s, Uri sprinted up and down the stairs carrying artwork, while I huffed and puffed behind.

Uri was a consummate craftsman, and would spend hours considering a single word, or how to position a character on the page. I learned much from him, and he was always generous with praise when my own books were released. Uri will be greatly missed, but his art will live on in the memories, and on the bookshelves of countless readers. — Richard Michelson

New York Times: Uri Shulevitz, 89, Acclaimed Children’s Book Author and Illustrator, Dies

Publisher’s Weekly : Uri Shulevitz on Memoir and Memories