Trucks, trains, and boats never looked as good as they do in the books of Donald Crews, a celebrated children’s book writer and illustrator who has won the field’s top honors including two Caldecott Awards and a Laura Ingalls Wilder Award.

Raised in Newark, Crews spent summers in Cottondale, Florida, which became an inspiration for some of his later work including Bigmama’s (1991) and Freight Train (1978), which drew on his experiences traveling by train between New Jersey and Florida. He had much encouragement from his family and teachers, one, in particular, helped Crews get the needed entry exams for art schools and assured him, “"You will go to art school, and you will succeed."

He attended Cooper, where he met his wife Ann Jonas, graduating in 1959. When drafted into the army in 1963, he served in Frankfurt, Germany, for two years and as his tenure was coming to an end, prepared a portfolio to find graphic design work back in New York. The portfolio included an alphabet book only as a sample for potential employers. But several art directors who saw the work suggested he submit it for publication, which eventually led to his first book, We Read: A to Z (1967). It was a wholly new approach to a children’s primer. The letter C, for instance, was explained by the line “Cc, corner where the yellow is” and illustrated with a yellow square in one corner of a red page.

His first Caldecott Honor came for Freight Train (1978). “Freight Train was close to the time when I was doing most of my work as a designer, and abstraction and brevity and symbol were more important to me, were more significant to the way I did my work.” He was awarded the honor again in 1980 for Truck.

The American Library Association sums up the artist’s career: “Crews has elevated books for very young children to an art form. His bold illustrations raise the ordinary into stylized representations.”

He and Jonas are the parents of celebrated children’s book writer and illustrator Nina Crews.