Fred Marcellino, book-jacket designer and children's book author, illustrator and designer, died July 12. He was 61.
Marcellino, a classically trained painter, began his career in publishing in the 1970s. His jacket designs defied conventions of the time, trading marketing-driven covers for elegant images and equally inspired typography. The overall effect revolutionized the industry and brought additional importance to the field of book design.
Among the bestselling authors whose book jackets Marcellino designed are Tom Wolfe, Margaret Atwood, Milan Kundera and Anne Tyler. He was commissioned by a number of publishers, designing more than 40 jackets each year, until he began illustrating children's books in the late 1980s.
Marcellino received a Caldecott Honor for his first children's book, Puss in Boots, in 1990; he went on to illustrate six more children's books. In 1999, Marcellino published I, Crocodile, a picture book he both wrote and illustrated, and last year he reillustrated the E.B. White classic The Trumpet of the Swan. He also designed all of his books.
