About Uri Shulevitz
Uri Shulevitz (Hebrew: אורי שולביץ; February 27, 1935 – February 15, 2025) was an American writer and illustrator of children's books. He won the 1969 Caldecott Medal for U.S. picture book illustration, recognizing The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship, an Eastern European fairy tale retold by Arthur Ransome in 1916. == Life and career == Uri Shulevitz was born in Warsaw, Poland, on February 27, 1935. During the bombing of Warsaw in 1939, a bomb fell into a stairwell of his apartment building when he was at home. The family fled from Warsaw, first to Bialystok, later to Turkestan, experiences that Shulevitz would later capture in his 2020 memoir Chance: Escape from the Holocaust, which the Wall Street Journal then listed among the 20 best children's books of the past 20 years. Eventually, they settled in Paris by 1947, then moved again to Israel in 1949. During the Sinai War in 1956, Shulevitz joined the Israeli Army. Later, he joined the Ein Gedi kibbutz. Shulevitz moved to New York City in 1959, studying painting at Brooklyn Museum Art School and working as an illustrator for a Hebrew children's book publisher. In 1962, an editor at Harper & Row saw his freelance portfolio and suggested that Shulevitz write children's books.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.