Authors Emeritus: Syd Hoff

His illus­tra­tions best char­ac­ter­ized as sim­plis­tic and humor­ous, Syd Hoff has held a warm place in children’s hearts through more than 200 books. Born on Sep­tem­ber 4th, Syd Hoff grew up in New York City. He went to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Design as a fine arts stu­dent, but his teach­ers didn’t appre­ci­ate the humor that per­vad­ed his work.

Hoff sold his first car­toon to The New York­er at the age of eigh­teen. He drew many sin­gle-pan­el car­toons for that and oth­er mag­a­zines, as well as his own car­toon fea­ture, Laugh It Off, which ran in syn­di­ca­tion for almost twen­ty years.

In 1958, he pub­lished his first children’s book, Dan­ny and the Dinosaur, which is a clas­sic for begin­ning read­ers. It was also one of the first. He has writ­ten sev­er­al fine books about car­toon­ing, all of which are worth find­ing in a used bookstore.

Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty in New York state hous­es the orig­i­nal draw­ings for his com­ic strip and mag­a­zine art, while the deGrum­mond Col­lec­tion in Mis­sis­sip­pi holds orig­i­nal mate­ri­als for forty-six of his books for children.

Mr. Hoff died May 12, 2004, at the age of 91.

—Vic­ki Palmquist

For more Authors Emer­i­tus biogra­phies please vis­it the AE index.