*Tomfoolery!: Randolph Caldecott and the Rambunctious Coming-of Age of Children's Books by Michelle Markel (2023) is the story of Randolph Caldecott. Inside the front and back covers are examples of his illustrations. Barbara McClintock's illustrations bring the liveliness required for this particular biography.
I'd just finished reading about Randolph Caldecott in Marurice Sendak's Caldecott & Co.: Notes on Boos and Pictures . I requested Markel's book and one published in 2013 from my local library, and I discovered they both cover the same territory. Randolph Caldecott: The Man Who Could Not Stop Drawing by Leonard S. Marcus is appropriate for the middle school student and older, while Markel's book is for the younger crowd. Marcus goes into much more detail with exponentially more text and a multitude of illustrations. Both books have back matter for ongoing study.
"In 1937 the leading librarians felt the time had come to establish an award honoring distinguished achievement by an American children's book illustrator. they named the new prize the Caldecott Medal and awarded it for the first time the following year. Writing in 1946, on the one hundredth anniversary of his birth, the American novelist and critic Hilda Van Stockum said of Caldecott: 'He was always aiming at the next picture; his very figures seem to be pointing to it; one cannot wait to turn the page and see what happens next.'" (Marcus, p. 60)
I learned that an illustration by Caldecott from The Diverting History of John Gilpin (William Cowper, 1878) is the image on the Caldecott medals. What a treat to find these biographies about an artist who changed picture books forever.
