Wallace Tripp


Wallace Whitney Tripp was an American illustrator, anthologist and author. He was known for creating anthropomorphic animal characters of emotional complexity and for his great visual and verbal humor. He was one of several illustrators of the Amelia Bedelia series of children's stories. He has illustrated over 40 books, including Marguerite, Go Wash Your Feet, Wallace Tripp's Wurst Seller, Casey at the Bat and A Great Big Ugly Man Came Up and Tied His Horse to Me. Tripp also drew many greeting cards for the Pawprints line.

Biography

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Tripp grew up in rural New Hampshire and New York City. He attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston where he studied graphic arts. He received a bachelor's degree in education from Keene State College and studied English at the University of New Hampshire. He then taught English for three years until choosing to devote himself full-time to illustration.
For a time, Tripp's ex-wife Marcy ran a publishing house, Sparhawk Books, that published two of his books, Wallace Tripp's Wurst Seller and an illustrated edition of Hilaire Belloc's The Bad Child's Book of Beasts. During the 1980s, Tripp worked on an animation project with Richard Purdom's British studio. Throughout his career he created many greeting cards for Pawprints, a family-owned business, whose publisher was then wife, Marcy Tripp. A lover of classical music and a pilot, Tripp frequently included airplanes and musical references in his illustrations. For many years, he built and flew radio-controlled model planes. He lived in Peterborough, New Hampshire and had three children, two sons and a daughter. He had been retired for over 20 years due to Parkinson's disease.
On September 9, 2018, the official Wallace Tripp Facebook page announced his death.

Awards