Ellen Raskin's life was a series of paradoxes. She was trained in the fine arts but became a commercial artist who took great care and pride not only with her artwork but with every phase of its production. She was an extraordinarily creative artist who attributed her success to training which had emphasized technical mastery and discipline. She first won fame as a children's book illustrator for her visual ingeniousness, but she was equally capable of delightful verbal jokes. She used many differing media in her illustrations (in six months she produced the serenely beautiful woodcuts of Songs of Innocence and the hilarious cartoons of Nothing Ever Happens on My Block), yet her works are instantly recognizable. She was a well-known author and illustrator of picture books for preschoolers who won her greatest fame as an author of books for older children. She wrote tightly plotted mysteries filled...