Curling up with a good book is one of the fine pleasures in life. A book can take you to places that some can only dream about. A book can educate, stimulate, and spark creativity. A good author’s books are often read and reread to squeeze out every ounce of pleasure. Lois Lenski is such an author.
Lois Lenski was born in 1893 in Springfield, Ohio but spent most of her childhood in Anna where her father served as minister at the St. Jacob’s Lutheran Church. She attended high school in Sidney by taking the train every day from Anna. The Lenskis moved to Columbus so Reverend Lenski could take a position at Capital University, while Lois enrolled at The Ohio State University. She graduated in 1915 with a degree in education and a teaching certificate.
Not wanting to teach, Lois, at the urging of art professors, moved to New York City to attend the Arts Students League for four years. She supported herself by taking lettering jobs, painting greeting cards, and creating fashion ads. Lois met her future husband, Arthur Covey, and became his assistant for painting murals.
After completing classes in New York, Lois traveled to London to attend the Westminster School of art and to Italy in 1920 and 1921. While in London, Lenski was hired to illustrate books, the Betsy Tacy series, by Maud Hart Lovelace. Encouraged by the publisher, Lois wrote and illustrated her first book ‘Skipping Village’, in 1927 based on time spent in Anna. Nineteen-Forty-Four saw Lois win the Martha Kinney Cooper Ohioana Library Medal. The book, ‘Strawberry Girl’ was awarded the Newberry Medal in 1946, for being the best children’s book of the year.
Lois Lenski was the prolific writer and illustrator of almost 100 books including poetry, songs, plays for children, picture books and stories. All her work had reoccurring themes of a child and her town or environment. She also illustrated more than 50 books for authors. Lois accomplished all this while traveling to the regions about which she wrote, sketching all the while she visited with the locals, and being a wife, mother, stepmother. She was inducted into the Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame in 2003, in the category of art, music and journalism.
Lois Lenski extended her talents to include the world beyond the boundaries of the United States. Her gifts for writing and illustrating were shared for more than 50 years, inspiring the love and joy of reading for generations. Her works demonstrated the commonalities of all men as well as stoked the imagination of her readers and are still relevant today.
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. Journey into Childhood, an autobiography published in 1972, documents Lenski’s memories of her early life in a small Midwestern rural community at the turn of the century.
Losi Lenski was one of the most prolific children’s authors, illustrators of the twentieth century, working tirelessly to help children understand the world in which they lived. Lois left this world in 1974, but her legacy will live forever.