Nonny Hogrogian, an illustrator who drew on her Armenian heritage to convey variety and surprise to her woodcuts and watercolors — an strategy that helped broaden the world of kids’s literature and made her a two-time Caldecott Medal winner, died on Might 9 at a hospital in Holyoke, Mass. She was 92.
Her husband, the poet David Kherdian, mentioned the trigger was most cancers.
Ms. Hogrogian was amongst a small variety of illustrators to win a number of Caldecotts, thought of one of many highest honors in youngsters’s literature. She acquired her first medal in 1966 for the e-book “All the time Room for One Extra,” written by Sorche Nic Leodhas, and her second in 1972 for “One Tremendous Day,” primarily based on an Armenian folks story that she retold and illustrated.
She additionally acquired a Caldecott Honor, an award for distinguished runners-up, for “The Contest” (1977), one other Armenian folks story that she retold and illustrated.
Ms. Hogrogian was a detailed pal of the famend illustrators Maurice Sendak and Ezra Jack Keats, and like them she drew on the old-world European artistry and traditions of her immigrant household to broaden American youngsters’s literature beginning within the Sixties.
“Nonny helped kick open the door for as we speak’s multicultural motion in youngsters’s books,” Richard Michelson, a pal and fellow youngsters’s creator, wrote in an electronic mail. “She proudly explored her Armenian heritage in her many books — mining its folks tales and her personal historical past — at a time when most books have been extra thinking about making a ‘melting pot’ than a ‘patchwork quilt.’”
Ms. Hogrogian did a lot of her work utilizing woodcut prints, although she additionally used watercolors, charcoal and pen, relying on the challenge. She mentioned she began by learning the textual content to see which medium it known as for, relatively then imposing a single strategy to all her work.
Whatever the medium, her books impressed readers with a misleading simplicity, which upon shut inspection revealed a fancy richness of colour and tone. Her works stood on their very own as artwork whilst they dropped at life the tales being advised.
In her acceptance speech after receiving her first Caldecott, Ms. Hogrogian described her thought course of in deciding easy methods to illustrate “All the time Room for One Extra,” primarily based on a Scottish folks music a few poor man who retains welcoming visitors into his residence.
“Woodcuts, lengthy my favourite medium, have been too robust for the light folks within the heather,” she mentioned. “So I pulled out my watercolors and chalks, some ink and a pen, and earlier than lengthy, in an nearly easy manner, the drawings appeared to movement.”
Might Hogrogian was born on Might 7, 1932, within the Bronx. An uncle gave her the nickname Nonny when she was a baby, and it caught.
Her dad and mom, Mugerdich and Rakel (Ansoorian) Hogrogian, have been immigrants who had fled the Armenian genocide, a tragedy that subtly haunted a lot of her work (and that of her husband, Mr. Kherdian, whose dad and mom additionally fled the nation).
Her father was a photoengraver, whereas her mom took in piecework. Each of them painted of their spare time, which impressed Ms. Hogrogian at a younger age. She later described herself as an intensely shy baby who used her prodigious artwork expertise to attract Walt Disney characters to impress her classmates and academics.
Ms. Hogrogian studied high-quality arts at Hunter School, and after graduating in 1953 she discovered a job designing e-book covers for a New York writer, Thomas Y. Crowell.
Although she was allowed to do paintings for a number of the books, she needed to be a full-time artist. She studied woodcuts on the New Faculty and finally left for a contract profession.
Work as a contract designer was onerous, and she or he returned to working for publishers once in a while, and even thought of altering careers to turn into an occupational therapist. Her first Caldecott erased any worries she had by giving her a gentle provide of high-profile work.
Ms. Hogrogian met Mr. Kherdian when she was employed to design the quilt of his 1971 e-book, “Homage to Adana.” They married that yr. He’s her solely fast survivor.
She illustrated a number of extra of her husband’s books, whilst she continued her personal profession.
The couple lived a peripatetic life, first in Lyme Heart, N.H., after which in upstate New York. Additionally they spent seven years in rural Oregon, on a farm with different followers of George Gurdjieff, an Armenian thinker and mystic.
They moved to Armenia after the 2016 presidential election, however a again harm she suffered induced them to return to the US, first to Black Mountain, N.C., and later to western Massachusetts.
Ms. Hogrogian mentioned repeatedly that her subsequent e-book could be her final, and she or he usually referred to herself as retired, whilst she continued to work.
“I’ve most likely been busier in retirement than out of it,” she wrote in an autobiographical sketch in 2001. However the phrase “retirement,” she added, “signifies extra a time in my life after I must reside as I actually want to reside, and work is a big a part of what I take pleasure in doing.”
