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children's bookstore, she started painting by making pictures for her son's room. In time she showed in galleries in Oregon and
Washington. In 1983, she got her first job illustrating a children's book for Harper & Row, and in 1985 she wrote and illustrated the first book of her own. She has illustrated over 40 books, 12 of which she also wrote.
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in
Germany on March 25, 1945, at the end of the second World War. Instead of University, she opted for a three year apprenticeship in the book business. "Wanting to see the world", she and her husband came to the United States and settled in Portland, Oregon. Working first as a waitress, then in a
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Mathers was a self-taught artist and has a very distinct artistic style. Critic H. Nichols B. Clark describes her formal aesthetic, explaining that
Mathers " simplified forms that comprise flat shapes. She assembles a carefully articulated formal arrangement whose visual dynamics are as integral to
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the production as the pictorial narrative." Linnea
Hendricks explains that Mathers' picturebooks "combine a flat, naive, folklike style with wit and a strong sense of design" and are "praised for their freshness, originality, subtlety, and genuine feeling."
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with her husband, author and photographer
Michael Mathers, who she married in 1980. Petra and Michael died by suicide at their home on February 6, 2024. She was 78.
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Myth, Magic, and
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Petra
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Hearn, Michael
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1999—New York Times Best
Illustrated Children's Book of the Year for
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1990—New York Times Best
Illustrated Children's Book of the Year for
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1986—New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Book of the Year for
365:"Petra Mathers, Author Whose Children's Stories Soared, Dies at 78"
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1999—Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Award for Illustration for
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Children's Literature Independent Information and Reviews
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