He and his artist wife committed to each designing one Christmas card a day until the mortgage was paid off. When the war was over, Lawson married and settled in Westport, Connecticut. There were no mass produced camouflage uniforms at the time, and it is remarkable that all such clothes, usually reserved for snipers, were individually hand-painted. The military value of concealing patterning and coloration took hold during WWI and a large group of artists (including such talents as Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, and Arshile Gorky) were recruited to design and paint camouflage disguises for war equipment and installations. His preferred medium was pen and ink, but for Rabbit Hill, he created soft-washed pencil drawings with his meticulous hand, quite different from the bold thick-lined caricatures of The Story of Ferdinand or Wee Gillis.Īfter graduating from art school, Lawson joined a group of artists and designers in the Camouflage Corps in France.

Robert Lawson is the only creator of children’s books to have been awarded both the Newberry Award (for Rabbit Hill in 1945) and the Caldecott Medal ( for They Were Strong and Good, a chronicle of his forebears, in 1941). There is the highstrung Mother in a perennial nervous state, the cheerful and enthusiastic Little Georgie, the folksy and curmudgeonly Uncle Analdas whose speech is peppered with “dingblasted” and “gumdinged”, and the loyal, courageous Willie Fieldmouse whose role it is to discover that Mr. Robert Lawson created, largely through humorous dialogue, a distinct assortment of animal characters, beginning with the oratorical Father, variously viewed as eloquent or insufferably verbose (“He always continued until something stopped him.”), who constantly harkens back to his Kentucky bluegrass roots.

The plot does not seem like much, but this book has staying power. (“’You will find, Phewie,’ said Father with some heat, ‘that good breeding and good garbage go hand in hand.’”) The Man and Lady celebrate the first harvest with a feast for the animals, with the words “There is Enough For All”. Muldoon, take up residence, plant a lush vegetable garden, and generate a bounty of kitchen scraps. They watch as the Man, the Lady, and their old Cat, Mr.

After a period of privation, the animals are excited that the Big House on Rabbit Hill will be occupied once again. This refrain is passed from animal to animal, from Little Georgie to his Father and Mother, to Pokey the Woodchuck, Willie Fieldmouse, the Mole, Phewie the Skunk.

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