Now in print for more than sixty years, this classic story of "the cutest,
silliest tugboat you ever saw" continues to delight children around the world.
This 8 x 8 edition features watercolor illustrations done in the style of the
late Hardie Gramatky.
關於作者:
Hardie Gramatky was born in Dallas, TX, in 1907 but moved to California as
a small boy after his father died of tuberculosis. He attended Stanford
University earning the tuition by working as a logger and a bank teller and
Chouinard Art Institute before becoming one of Disney’s early animators in 1929.
In the 1920s and 30s, he helped start the California Watercolor movement. In
1936, after a 6-year Disney contract expired, he left the company earning $150
a week, a huge sum in the Depression to move to New York City with his wife,
artist Dorothea Cooke, to become illustrators. It was there, in his studio on
Pearl Street, that Gramatky saw a Moran tugboat out his window that obviously
didn’t want to work and kept making figure 8s on the East River. So in 1939
after painting many watercolors of the busy harbor, Gramatky wondered what would
happen if a “tug didn’t want to tug” and wrote the story. The book got immediate
attention and has been a favorite picture book ever since, and Gramatky’s fine
art watercolors and giclée prints continue to be prized. He died of cancer of
the ileum in Westport, Connecticut, on April 29, 1979.