“Acclaimed illustrator and author Jeanette Winter, a pioneer of picture book biographies and nonfiction, many of which focused on brave women fighting for social justice, died Nov. 7 in New York City of heart and kidney failure. She was 86,” reported Shannon Maughan for Publishers Weekly. Winter’s picture book biography, Our House Is on Fire: Greta Thunberg’s Call to Save the Planet (Beach Lane, 2019) has been translated into 21 languages.
Winter grew up in Chicago and loved drawing and painting from an early age, but had no female artists as role models when she was growing up. In a 2013 interview with Katherine Handcock for A Mighty Girl, Winter said sharing those stories drew her to children’s literature. “I’m committed to the picture book form, and hope that young children, especially girls, would have early exposure to strong role models, and to see all the possibilities that life has to offer. When I was a child in the ’40’s, such a book was rare. I don’t ever remember reading one.”
Winter said her book, My Name is Georgia is an example of one she wishes she could have read all those years ago. She also offered insight into her process for making complex stories accessible for young readers. “First, I strive for simplicity in the words and pictures. Second, the story must be strong.” Winter went on to describe how The Librarian of Basra (Clarion, 2005) focuses on the rescue of books from a library in Basra, Iraq during the war, and how a reader’s experience shapes what they glean from the story. “A very young child will focus on Alia, the brave librarian. Older children will incorporate the war,” Winter told A Mighty Girl.
The World is Not a Rectangle: A Portrait of Architect Zaha Hadid (Beach Lane Books, 2017), a picture book biography of a Muslim architect, received an NCTE Orbis Pictus Honor Book Award and was named to several state award lists.
Winter’s first book as both author and illustrator was The Christmas Visitors: A Norwegian Folk Tale (Pantheon, 1968). Michael Schaub, writing for Kirkus Reviews, stated Winter published more than 65 additional books and her longtime editor Allyn Johnston hinted another book may be coming.
“Jeanette Winter was bold and fierce and yes, stubborn, and she was a visionary.” Earlier this year, Winter sent Johnston a manuscript inspired by the loss of her family’s home in the Los Angeles fires, and the calla lilies that emerged from the scorched earth a few months later. “You can bet I am going to go back into that fire project of hers, in the hope that there is indeed a picture book waiting inside it, biding its time before bursting into the world, like those stubborn and beautiful calla lilies that inspired it,” Johnston said.
Winter also illustrated several books written by her son, Jonah Winter, most recently, The Snow Man (Beach Lane Books, 2023).
Cynsational Notes
Gayleen Rabakukk holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is currently a student in the Library Science Master’s program at the University of North Texas. She also has an undergraduate degree in Journalism from the University of Central Oklahoma. She has published numerous newspaper and magazine articles, and two regional interest books for adults. She is represented by Terrie Wolf of AKA Literary Management.
She works part-time as a Library Assistant at the Lago Vista Public Library, where she leads a book club for young readers. She teaches creative writing workshops and is a bookseller at Paper Bark Birch Books in Cedar Park, Texas. She loves inspiring curiosity in young readers through stories of hope and adventure. Follow her on Instagram and Bluesky.