Description
Before Shrek made it on the silver screen, there was William Steig's SHREK!, a book about an ordinary ogre who leaves his swampy childhood home to go out and see the world. Ordinary, that is, if a foul and hideous being who ends up marrying the most stunningly ugly princess on the surface of the planet is what you consider ordinary. SHREK! can be found in this collection of six modern classics by Steig, along with stories concerning creatures ordinary and extraordinary, including Irene, a brave and loving little girl who must battle a howling blizzard, and Spinky, a boy who is so completely annoyed by his family that he no longer has any use for the human race. Gathered together here for the first time, these entertaining stories will delight fans of Steig, both old and new.
Synopsis
Shrek, a horrid little ogre, goes out into the world to find adventure and along the way encounters a witch, a knight in armor, a dragon, and, finally, a hideous princess, who's even uglier than he is!
About this Book
Horribly hideous Shrek leaves home and terrifies everyone he encounters in his search for his equally ugly bride, in an omnibus of six stories: Shrek!, The Amazing Bone, Brave Irene, Spinky Sulks, Caleb and Kate, and Doctor DeSoto, releasing just in time to mark the author's one-hundredth birthday and the release of the next Shrek movie.
About the Author
William Steig (November 14, 1907 – October 3, 2003) was a prolific American cartoonist, sculptor and, later in life, an author of popular children's literature.
Steig was born in 1907 in the Bronx in New York City to Polish-Jewish immigrants from Austria[citation needed], both socialists. His father was a house painter and his mother was a seamstress[1] who encouraged his artistic leanings. As a child, he dabbled in painting and was an avid reader of literature. Among other works, he was said to have been especially fascinated by Pinocchio. In addition to artistic endeavors, he also did well at athletics, being a member of the collegiate All-American water polo team. He graduated from Townsend Harris High School at 15, but never completed college, though he attended three of them, spending two years at City College of New York, three years at the National Academy of Design, and a mere five days at the Yale School of Fine Arts before dropping out of each.
His brother Irwin was a journalist and painter, his brother Henry a writer, played the saxophone and painted and brother Arthur a writer and poet who, according to Steig, read The Nation in the cradle, was telepathic and "drew as well as Picasso or Matisse."
When his family became caught in financial problems during the Great Depression, he began drawing cartoons as a freelance artist, and sold his first cartoon to the New Yorker in 1930. He soon became quite successful, and over the coming decades, he would publish over 1600 cartoons in the magazine, including 117 of its covers, leading Newsweek to dub him the "King of Cartoons."
Steig was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949.
Steig was a patient of the psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich and illustrated Reich's polemic, Listen, Little Man.
In his 60s, he decided to try his hand at another artistic endeavor, and in 1968 wrote his first children's book. He excelled here as well, and his third book, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (1970), won the prestigious Caldecott Medal. He went on to write more than thirty children's books, including famously the Doctor De Soto series, continuing to write into his 90s. Among his other well-known works, the picture book Shrek! (1990) formed the basis for the Dreamworks Animation film Shrek.
At the age of 95, Steig died from natural causes on October 3, 2003. Shrek 2 honored him by incorporating his name near the end of the credits. "In memory of William Steig 1907-2003."
Steig married four times and had three children. From 1936-1949, Steig was married to educator and artist Elizabeth Mead Steig (1909-1983), sister of anthropologist Margaret Mead, from whom he was later divorced. They were the parents of jazz flutist Jeremy Steig and a daughter, Lucinda. He married second wife Kari Homestead in 1950, and they had a daughter, Margit Laura. After their divorce, he was married to Stephanie Healey from 1964-1966. His final marriage, to Jeanne Doron, endured for the rest of his life.
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