Ellen Raskin (March 13, 1928 – August 8, 1984) was an American children's writer and illustrator. She won the 1979 Newbery Medal for The Westing Game, a mystery novel, and another children's mystery, Figgs & Phantoms, was a Newbery Honor Book in 1975.

In 2012 The Westing Game was ranked number nine all-time among children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal, a monthly with a primarily-U.S. audience.^[4]

Life

Raskin was born in Milwaukee^[5] and grew up during the Great Depression. She was educated at the University of Wisconsin–Madison with a major in fine art.^[1][6]

Raskin was an accomplished graphic artist. In New York City she worked as a commercial artist for about 15 years. Among other things, she designed more than 1000 dust jackets for books, including the first edition of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, the 1963 Newbery Medal winner.^[1]

In 1957, she married graphic designer Roy Kuhlman, but they soon divorced. In 1960 she married Dennis Flanagan, editor of Scientific American.^[1][6]

Raskin died at the age of 56 on August 8, 1984, in New York City, as a result of a connective-tissue disease.^[2]

Education

At the age of 17, Ms. Raskin entered the University of Wisconsin-Madison with the intention of majoring in journalism. However, after visiting an art exhibit at the Chicago Art Institute,^[7] she changed her major to fine arts.

Works

Children's picture books

Raskin wrote and illustrated twelve picture books, published by Atheneum Books except as noted.^[8]

• Nothing Ever Happens on My Block, 1967
• Silly Songs and Sad, Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1967
• Spectacles, 1968
• Ghost in a Four-Room Apartment, 1969
• And It Rained, 1969
• A & The, or, William T. C. Baumgarten Comes to Town, 1970
• The World's Greatest Freak Show, 1971
• Franklin Stein, 1972
• Moe Q. McGlutch, He Smoked Too Much, Parents, 1973
• Who, Said Sue, Said Whoo?, 1973
• Moose, Goose & Little Nobody, 1976
• Twenty-Two, Twenty-Three, 1976

Children’s novels

Raskin wrote four novels, all published by E. P. Dutton.^[8]

• The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel), 1971
• Figgs & Phantoms, 1974
• The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues, 1975
• The Westing Game, 1978

As illustrator

Raskin also illustrated more than twenty books by other writers.^[8]

• Happy Christmas: Tales for Boys and Girls, edited by Claire H. Bishop, Ungar, 1956
• The bound Man and other stories, by Ilse Aichinger, transl. by Eric Mosbacher, New York: Noonday Press, 1956
• A Child's Christmas in Wales, by Dylan Thomas (1950); J. M. Dent, 1968
• Mama, I Wish I Was Snow, Child You'd Be Very Cold, by Ruth Krauss, Atheneum, 1962
• Philosophy and History. The Ernst Cassirer Festschrift, ed. Raymond Klibansky and H. J. Paton, 1963 (second edition)
• Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, selected by Dwight MacDonald, Crowell, 1965
• We Dickinson's, by Aileen Fisher and Olive Rabe, Atheneum, 1965
• The Jewish Sabbath, by Molly Cone, Crowell, 1966
• Paths of Poetry: Twenty-Five Poets and Their Poems, ed. Louis Untermeyer, Delacorte, 1966
• Songs of Innocence (Volumes 1 & 2), by William Blake (1789, 1794), music and illustrations by Ellen Raskin, Doubleday, 1966
• D. H. Lawrence: Poems Selected for Young People, ed. William Cole, Viking, 1967
• Ellen Grae, by Vera and Bill Cleaver, Lippincott, 1967
• Poems of Robert Herrick, ed. Winfield T. Scott, Crowell, 1967
• Probability: the Science of Chance, by Arthur G. Razzell and K. G. O. Watts, Doubleday, 1967 ‡
• This Is 4: the Idea of a Number, by Razzell and Watts, Doubleday, 1967 ‡
• Books: A Book to Begin On, by Susan Bartlett, Holt, 1968
• Inatuk's Friend, by Suzanne Stark Morrow, Atlantic/Little, 1968
• Lady Ellen Grae, by Vera and Bill Cleaver, Lippincott, 1968
• A Paper Zoo: A Collection of Animal Poems by Modern American Poets, edited by Renee K. Weiss, Macmillan, 1968
• Piping Down the Valleys Wild: Poetry for the Young of All Ages, edited by Nancy Larrick, Delacorte, 1968
• Symmetry, by Razzell and Watts, Doubleday, 1968 ‡
• We Alcotts, by Aileen Fisher and Olive Rabe, Atheneum, 1968
• Circles and Curves, by Razzell and Watts, Doubleday, 1969 ‡
• Come Along!, by Rebecca Caudill, Holt, 1969
• Shrieks at Midnight: Macabre Poems, Eerie and Humorous, edited by Sara and John E. Brewton, Crowell, 1969
• Three and the Shape of Three, by Razzell and Watts, Doubleday, 1969 ‡
• Elidor, by Alan Garner (1965), Walck, 1970
• Goblin Market, by Christina Rossetti (1862), Dutton, 1970

‡ Raskin illustrated at least five volumes in a series of 32- and 48-page mathematics books by Arthur C. Razzell and Kenneth George Oliver Watts, which was inaugurated by Doubleday in 1964.