Author-illustrator Hudson Talbott, widely recognized for the detailed, often humorous, watercolor-and-pencil images in his broad range of picture books, died on January 22 in Albany (N.Y.) Medical Center following a brief illness. He was 76.
Hudson Talbott was born July 11, 1949, in Louisville, Ky. to Peyton Talbott, a bank manager, and Mildred Pence Talbott, a dress shop manager, and was the youngest of four children. Growing up in Louisville, Talbott developed a love of art early on, a passion that was heartily encouraged by his parents. “They allowed my artistic self-expression to flourish,” Talbott told Something About the Author, “and in so doing, fostered my belief in myself—a belief that I had something to say and something worth saying.”
Talbott graduated from Waggener High School in 1967 and attended the University of Cincinnati from 1967–69. He then studied painting and sculpture at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art campus in Rome, earning his B.F.A. in 1971. After college, he continued his art education and worked while living in Rome, Amsterdam, and Hong Kong before moving to New York City in 1974. “I was just passing through seeing friends, and I got sucked in,” he told PW in a 1987 interview. “New York is very seductive. I’ve been here ever since.”
As a freelance artist and designer in New York, Talbott created notecards and calendars, and received commissions for projects from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Opera, the Museum of Modern Art, and Bloomingdale’s department store, among others. His first commissioned work for children was illustrating the 16-page picture book How to Show Grown-ups the Museum, published by MoMA in 1986. That same year, Talbott’s greeting cards, calendars, and posters originally commissioned by Bloomingdale’s for the Statue of Liberty’s centennial were exhibited at the New York Public Library and the Louvre in Paris, and became The Lady at Liberty: Memoirs of a Monument, a book for adults published by Avon.
Soon after, one of Talbott’s calendars featuring humorous dinosaur characters caught the eye of David Allender, then an editor at Crown Children’s Books, and was the spark for his picture book debut. We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story (Crown, 1987) features a time-traveling salesman who transports a crew of prehistoric dinosaurs to 20th-century New York City just in time to shake up the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. “The seven-year-old in me wrote that book,” Talbott told PW. “It was an integrated me: the adult me making the pictures, the child writing it.” We’re Back! received warm critical praise and was adapted as an animated feature film by Steven Spielberg in 1993.
The success of We’re Back! also set Talbott firmly on his dream career path. The children’s book industry “feels like a natural fit because of what I bring to it, as well as what it opens up for me,” he said in SATA. “I’ve always told stories through pictures; now I’m discovering how to paint with words.”
Over his career, Talbott was able to weave his varied interests—Arthurian legend, travel, history, animals—into a broad publishing oeuvre that consisted of more than 27 books, including King Arthur: The Sword in the Stone (Morrow, 1991), Safari Journal: The Adventures in Africa of Cary Monroe (Harcourt, 2002), and It’s All About Me-ow: A Young Cat’s Guide to the Good Life (Penguin/Paulsen, 2012). His passions for art and history were forged in River of Dreams: The Story of the Hudson River (Putnam, 2009) and Picturing America: Thomas Cole and the Birth of American Art (Penguin/Paulsen, 2018) two titles spotlighting Talbott’s beloved Hudson River Valley, where he lived for many years in the community of Catskill.
Among the accolades for his work are a 2006 Newbery Honor awarded to the picture book Show Way by Jacqueline Woodson (Putnam, 2005) and a 2022 Schneider Family Honor for A Walk in the Words (Penguin/Paulsen, 2021), which tells Talbott’s personal story of reading difficulties and celebrates how people all learn differently. Talbott’s final book, The Next Shiny Object, is scheduled for publication with Nancy Paulsen Books in August 2026.
Nancy Paulsen, president and publisher of her eponymous imprint at Penguin Young Readers, and Talbott’s longtime editor, paid tribute: “Hudson was a great artist, author, and friend. We got to spend such memorable time together, working, eating, and laughing, as he created a library of fascinating books. Hudson was interested in everything—history, geography, animals, and the human psyche—and he, our art team, and I had endless fun, and debates, over how to bring his imagination and curiosity to life. His artwork helped us all see things differently, and his most recent book, A Walk in the Words, helped children feel less overwhelmed by learning differences. Hudson’s forthcoming title, The Next Shiny Object, about his experiences with his roaming attention, portrays the challenges as well as the benefits of having an overactive imagination. We are going to miss him, and his imagination, so much, but his spirit and his books will live on and continue to inspire.”
And David Allender, publisher of Godine, shared this remembrance: “I very luckily launched Hudson’s career in children’s books out of sheer desperation. The Red Sox lost the World Series in 1986 and I was so depressed, I didn’t realize Crown Children’s Books didn’t have a lead fall title until a month before sales conference. My art director, John Grandits, and I ran to Barnes & Noble hoping to find something inspiring, and we spotted a calendar of funny dinosaur paintings in contemporary situations. This was it! We raced back to the office, looked up Hudson Talbott in the phone book, and the result was his first book, We’re Back!
Hudson was an author I am honored to say was also a friend. His best quality, one that still touches my heart, is that he never used humor to push people back. His humor was the effortless, genuine heart of his Louisville, Kentucky charm. A heart that always drew his friends closer.”
