Leo was born in Amsterdam on May 5, 1910. He was the only child of an opera-singing mother and an accountant father. Is it any wonder that his first recognized successes were in the world of commercial art? Leo worked as an art director for N.W. Ayer in Philadelphia and for Time Life, Inc., in New York before taking on his own clients.

One of Leo’s great strengths was his ability to recognize opportunity when it was presented. Several of his most popular ad campaigns were developed from ideas that nearly slipped through the cracks. The popular “Never Underestimate the Power of a Woman” campaign for Ladies’ Home Journal was one such occasion. That phrase had been discarded when Leo noticed it sitting in a wastepaper basket and realized that it was perfect for the Journal’s ad campaign. Many of his adventures and longtime associations came about as the result of unplanned meetings with his friends and colleagues. My grandparents were living on the Italian Riviera when, after an informal meal with friends in Tuscany, Leo and my grandmother Nora decided to move to that part of Italy. They lived there for many years, and Leo died there on October 11, 1999.

How Leo’s first children’s book came about was, similarly, kismet. My grandfather started writing children’s books after an exercise in entertaining me and my brother during a boring train trip. The distraction that he created for us resulted in Little Blue and Little Yellow. Its publication was gratifying to him, and he found that children’s books gave him an outlet for his creativity that was also applauded by others. Before long, he was doing a book every year or so.

As with other coincidental events in Leo’s life, his careers in design and children’s books overlapped. Leo’s first books were published several years before he retired from commercial art. The media and the techniques he used, at any given time, were consistent between careers. Perhaps the clearest example of this can be seen in Pezzettino, published in 1975. The mosaics of Pezzettino are reminiscent of both the fine art that Leo was working on in his studio at that time and the ad campaigns and images that he was creating on behalf of his clients.

As I got older, Leo would often show me his books during their formation or just prior to sending them off to his publisher. I was always amazed at how he would mull over an idea in his head, sometimes making a few sketches. But ordinarily, he would sit down at his table and create a book in the course of three weeks—cover to cover. He had a way of knowing what would work and what would not. He saw the whole story—all the art, all the words, the whole package—before he started to produce the actual pages.

Leo had tiny hands for a man his size. Somehow, even though his hands were always in contact with pencils and paint and other dirty art supplies, they were always clean. Leo’s messes were always meticulous. Perhaps he would credit that to having been the only child in a family of adults.

Like Pezzettino, Leo thought a lot about his relationship to the rest of the world. He thought about where he fit in, and when and where he set himself apart from other people and other movements, politics, and fads. I have always maintained that he was the hero in each of his books. He was Swimmy, Cornelius, Tico, Matthew, and most certainly Frederick. Through his animal heroes, he was able to explore and express his own limits and ideals.

While he has been credited with being an innovator in the worlds of graphic design and children’s books, he believed strongly in a classic arts education. The rules were meant to be broken and redefined only after developing an appreciation for, and mastering, formal style. He felt that children should take formal drawing lessons to develop technique and artistic discipline.

Leo loved music. I never saw him look at a piece of sheet music, but he could play anything he heard. He used to play the accordion when I was little. My grandmother and I would move the furniture back, roll up the rugs, and dance to his polkas. A few years later, he taught me to clap in rhythm for him as he learned to play flamenco guitar. He picked up sitar lessons in India and, finally, when he was in the advanced stages of Parkinson’s disease, when one foot in front of another seemed too complicated, he played all his old favorites at my piano with ease and unmitigated joy.

—Annie Lionni
January 31, 2006

Ann Lionni is the granddaughter of Leo Lionni and lives in New York with her husband and four children. Her grandmother, Nora, lives upstairs. In celebration of the reissue of Pezzettino, we have asked her for some thoughts about her grandfather.

Copyright © 2006 by Ann Lionni. Used by permission of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this text may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from Random House.