Ian Falconer’s cause of death was announced by his agent and lawyer, Conrad Rippy, who said the cause was kidney failure.
He was the creator of the ‘Olivia’ series and died on Tuesday, March 7, 2023, in Norwalk, Connecticut, at the age of 63.
Ian Falconer had a successful career drawing covers for The New Yorker and designing opera sets alongside David Hockney.
He converted ‘Olivia,’ a children’s book about a rowdy piglet that became a publishing sensation, from a character he had first created as a Christmas gift for a niece.
In 2000, Falconer hit the children’s book jackpot with the Olivia series, which was named a Caldecott Honor Book and continues to be on the children’s image book best-seller list of The New York Times for almost 107 weeks.
For his latest children’s book, published in 2022, Falconer changed species. It was named ‘Two Dogs,’ and it portrayed the story of Perry and Augie, twin dachshunds who run away from their house one day while their homeowners are at work and wreak havoc outside but manage to cover escape blame.
Mr. Falconer was asked in a 2012 interview about what ingredient makes a good children’s book.
He said, “If I had to say one thing, it would be to not underestimate your audience, Children will figure things out; it’s what they do best — sorting out the world.”
Ian Falconer’s early life
Ian Woodward Falconer was born in Ridgefield, Connecticut, on August 25, 1959, to Alexandra and Bruce Falconer.
Falconer’s father worked as an architect, while his mother co-possess a gourmet food store, taught art, and operated a sailing school.
He was raised in Connecticut and studied for high school at the Cambridge School of Weston in Massachusetts.
He studied art history for two years at New York University, then drawing at the Parsons School of Design in New York before transferring to the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles.
On the West Coast, Falconer began working with David Hockney, a well-known artist and stage designer who was also his love companion for a while.
In the second extent of his Hockney biography, Christopher Simon Sykes quotes Mr. Falconer as the expression that he would often be wake in the night by Mr. Hockney, and “then you’d probably hear his Picasso lecture for the 85th time.”
Between their high-profile partnerships was a 1992 San Francisco Opera and the staging of Puccini’s “Turandot” for the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Mr. Falconer returned to the East Coast by the mid-1990s, staying in New York and continuing performing theatre jobs while still working as an artist.
His first of 30 New Yorker covers was published in July 1996.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7t7XZmpqaZpOkunC1wKdkn5mcmLyvsdFmmpqto5p6sLKMnZyarJhk