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Author Information
Ludwig Bemelmans was born in the Austrian Tyrol Mountains on April 27, 1898. His father was a painter and his mother was the daughter of a prosperous brewer.
When Bemelmans was a teenager, his parents apprenticed him to his Uncle Hans, who owned a string of fancy resort hotels. After the 16-year-old Bemelmans had a dispute with the head waiter, his family gave him the option of going to reform school or emigrating to America.
Bemelmans chose America and arrived in New York in 1914. Once again, his career as a waiter was disastrous. After losing a job because he arrived wearing one yellow and one white shoe, Bemelmans enlisted in the Army. His antics as a military man and his difficulties in adjusting to the ways of his adopted country are the subject of his hilarious memoir, MY WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES.
By the end of World War I, Bemelmans was a U.S. citizen. He returned to New York and continued to work in hotels and restaurants. Since his arrival in America, Bemelmans had been honing his artistic skills, taking art lessons when he could afford them.
In 1925, he decorated and became part owner of a restaurant known as the Hapsburg House, and traveled extensively in America and Europe. He met May Massee, the revered children's book editor at the Viking Press. She was to become one of the most influential people in his life.
Bemelmans' first children's book, HANSI, was published by Viking in 1934. In 1939, Bemelmans presented his latest work, MADELINE and it was published by Simon and Schuster on September 5, 1939. All five subsequent Madeline books were published by Viking, which remained his principal publisher for adult and children's books.
Bemelmans married Madeleine Freund in 1935, and they had a daughter named Barbara. Although he named his beloved character after his wife, Bemelmans said that watching his daughter gave him many of the inspirations for his Madeline books.
Throughout the 1950s, Bemelmans was as prolific as ever without giving up his interests in travel and the restaurant business. The murals he painted at New York's Carlyle Hotel bar are famous for their delightful whimsy.
After the success of MADELINE'S RESCUE, for which Bemelmans received the Caldecott Award in 1954, he continued to write about the adventures of the Parisian schoolgirl in MADELINE AND THE BAD HAT (1957), MADELINE AND THE GYPSIES (1959), and MADELINE IN LONDON (1961). Viking published MADELINE'S CHRISTMAS, which appeared originally in McCall's magazine, in 1985. Bemelmans died in New York City on October 1, 1962.
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