She then spent several months traveling in Italy before returning to the United States.

In 1920, Lenski traveled to London, studying at the Westminster School of Art in 1920-21. During this time she also studied illustration at the School of Industrial Art in New York. After graduating from Ohio State, Lenski received a scholarship to the Art Students League in New York, where she studied until 1920. Her minor was in fine arts, with her coursework concentrating on drawing and lettering. She then attended Ohio State University, graduating in 1915 with a B.S. But she also remembered that no one encouraged her to 'be original' or draw what she saw around her during her childhood, describing her work until the age of 15 as copying from other pictures.Īfter commuting by train to high school in Sidney, Ohio, Lenski graduated in 1911. Lenski was encouraged to pursue her talent for art by adults in her life, including teachers, a visiting artist-who, she later recalled, advised her father to buy her a high-quality set of paints because she had talent-and her father, who did so. When Lois was six, her family moved to the small town of Anna, Ohio, where her father was called to be a pastor. Lenski, a Prussian-born Lutheran clergyman and theologian, and Marietta Young Lenski, a Franklin County, Ohio native, who was a schoolteacher before her marriage.

Lenski was the fourth of five children born to Richard C.

In 1967 Lenski established the Lois Lenski Covey Foundation, which provides grants for book purchases to libraries and organizations serving children who are socially and economically at risk. Lenski also provided illustrations for books by other authors, including the first edition of The Little Engine that Could, by Watty Piper (1930), and the first four volumes of Maud Hart Lovelace's Betsy-Tacy series (1940-1943). Small' series of picture books (1934–62) her 'Historical' series of novels, including the Newbery Honor-winning titles Phebe Fairchild: Her Book (1936) and Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison (1941) and her 'Regional' series, including Newbery Medal-winning Strawberry Girl (1945) and Children's Book Award-winning Judy's Journey (1947). Her best-known bodies of work include the 'Mr. Her work includes children's picture books and illustrated chapter books, songbooks, poetry, short stories, her 1972 autobiography, Journey into Childhood, and essays about books and children's literature. Beginning with the release in 1927 of her first books, Skipping Village and Jack Horner's Pie: A Book of Nursery Rhymes, Lenski published 98 books, including several posthumous works. Lois Lenore Lenski Covey (Octo– September 11, 1974) was a Newbery Medal-winning author and illustrator of picture books and children's literature. Ohio State University, Art Students League of New York, Westminster School of Art

Cotton in My Sack by Lois Lenski