Mercer Mayer
Mayer, Mercer (1943– ), American author and illustrator of children's books. His father was in the navy, and Mayer spent his childhood in the South, and his adolescence in Hawaii. Rackham, Tenniel, Beardsley and Ford were his favourite illustrators, and he studied at the Hawaii Academy of Arts and the Art Students' League in New York. He worked with an advertising agency before devoting himself full‐time to his art.
Mayer has received numerous awards for his more than 100 books that humorously represent a child's world from a child's perspective. He developed the wordless children's picture book with A Boy, a Dog, and a Frog (1967), which led to a five‐book series. Feeling more comfortable with words, he added text to plots with the classic There's a Nightmare in my Closet (1968; UK, There's a Nightmare in my Cupboard, 1969), eventually producing only the text for unconventional silliness, such as the Appelard and Liverwurst books illustrated by Steven Kellogg.
Mayer is best known for two self‐illustrated series that address children's frustrations and fears. The Little Monster and Little Critter books with their menagerie of minority protagonists reject both racial and sex stereotyping, and feature topics ranging from jealousy of new siblings to the responsibility of keeping pets, to fear of the dentist. Important socialization tools, these mass‐marketed titles target a variety of reading levels and media. In addition to books, there are audio cassettes, film adaptations, and interactive CD‐ROMs (such as Little Monster at School, 1994; The Smelly Mystery, 1997).
In 1991 Mayer published three fairy‐tale adaptations in the Little Critter series: Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, and Jack and the Beanstalk. These highly detailed board books for toddlers all feature his ‘Critter‐Monster’ style of deft, scratchy pen strokes and bold colours. Very different are his earlier books for older children, which feature a richly muted ‘Victorian’ palette and design: these include The Sleeping Beauty (1981) and East of the Sun and West of the Moon (1980), a Norwegian folk tale. He has also illustrated other authors' retellings of Favorite Tales from Grimm (1978) and Beauty and the Beast (1978). Retold by Marianna Mayer (his first wife), the latter shows the influence of Villeneuve's version with its dreams of the prince and fairy warnings. Here, text and illustration beautifully complement each other as tension, foreboding, loneliness, and metamorphosis are dramatically reflected by foreshortened figures, Gothic surroundings, sombre colours, or Egyptian motifs of death and rebirth.
Bibliography
- Hearne, Betsy, Beauty and the Beast: Visions and Revisions of an Old Tale (1989).
- Lesniak, James, and Trosky, Susan M. (eds.), Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series, 38 (1993).
- Montreville, Doris de, and Crawford, Elizabeth D., Fourth Book of Junior Authors and Illustrators (1978).
— Mary Louise Ennis
