Wallace Whitney Tripp (June 26, 1940 – September 9, 2018) was an American illustrator, anthologist and author. He was known for creating anthropomorphic animal characters of emotional complexity and for his great visual and verbal humor. He was one of several illustrators of the Amelia Bedelia series of children's stories. He has illustrated over 40 books, including Marguerite, Go Wash Your Feet (1985), Wallace Tripp's Wurst Seller (1981), Casey at the Bat (1978) and A Great Big Ugly Man Came Up and Tied His Horse to Me (1973). Tripp also drew many greeting cards for the Pawprints line.
Pawprints Calendar cover illustration for 1984, illustration by Wallace Tripp, signed by the author.Wallace Tripp's pencil sketch comps of turkeys and notes for Purdum Animation, ca 1982
Perhaps best known for his children's books, Tripp also illustrated over 600 greeting cards for family-run company Pawprints Greeting Cards, Inc. Marcy Tripp, then-wife and Tripp's agent, ran Pawprints and created the publishing house, Sparhawk Books, that published two of his books, Wallace Tripp's Wurst Seller and an illustrated edition of Hilaire Belloc's The Bad Child's Book of Beasts. During the 1980s, Tripp worked on animation projects with Richard Purdum's British studio.[2] A lover of word-play, classical music, Tolkien, Shakespeare, and a pilot, Tripp frequently included references to these in his illustrations. in 1969 Tripp send J.R.R. Tolkien some of his illustrations for The Hobbit, and the letter Tolkien wrote in return was one of Tripp's prized possessions. For many years, Tripp built and flew radio-controlled model planes and sculpted pilot figures in his style.[3]
Rhymes without Reason from Mother Goose, World's Work, 1980.
Wallace Tripp's Wurst Seller, Sparhawk, 1981.Photocopy of pen and ink illustration by Wallace Tripp of The Hobbit, given to author JRR Tolkien in 1969 by the illustrator.Marguerite, Go Wash Your Feet! (verse), Houghton, 1985.
Rose's Are Red, Violet's Are Blue and Other Silly Poems, Little Brown & Co., 1999
Bibliography as illustrator
Reginald B. Hegarty, Rope's End, Houghton, 1965.
Lisa Tsarelka, Stay Away From My Lawnmower, Houghton, 1965.
Granfa' Grig Had a Pig and Other Rhymes without Reason from Mother Goose (Little, Brown, 1976), which Tripp both wrote and illustrated, won the 1977 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for Picture Books.
A Great Big Ugly Man Came Up and Tied His Horse to Me: A Book of Nonsense Verse (Little, Brown, 1973) appeared on the ALA Notable Book for Children list.