Kroninger, Stephen

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KRONINGER, Stephen

PERSONAL:

Married; children: two daughters.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Simon & Schuster, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

CAREER:

Graphic artist, illustrator, educator, and author. Illustrator of posters and album covers; cartoonist. Presents workshops and lectures at universities and colleges. Exhibitions: Exhibits include Museum of Modern Art, New York; works included in permanent collection at National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC.

WRITINGS:

(And illustrator) If I Crossed the Road, Atheneum Books for Young Readers (New York, NY), 1997.

ILLUSTRATOR

Dave Marsh, Fifty Ways to Fight Censorship: And Important Facts to Know about Censors, Thunder's Mouth Press (New York, NY), 1991.

Ken Siman, The Beauty Trip, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1995.

Barbara Park, Pssst! It's Me … the Bogeyman, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1998.

Lenny Hort, Tie Your Socks and Clap Your Feet: Mixed-up Poems, Atheneum Books for Young Readers (New York, NY), 2000.

Laura J. Garak, Cyberliteracy: Navigating the Internet with Awareness, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2001.

Illustrations anthologized in books, including Nuclear Warheads: Artists Draw the Line, edited by Steven Heller, Penguin Books (New York, NY), 1983; What the Songs Look Like: Contemporary Artists Interpret Talking Heads Lyrics, edited by Frank Olinsky, Harper (New York, NY), 1987; Album Cover/Album Five: The Fifth Book of Record Jackets, Billboard Books (New York, NY), 1989; The Savage Mirror: The Art of Contemporary Caricature, edited by Steven Heller and Gail Anderson, Watson-Guptill (New York, NY), 1992; Angry Graphics: Protest Posters of the Reagan/Bush Era, edited by Steven Heller and Karrie Jacobs, Watson-Guptill, 1992; Go Naked 1, edited by Gary Panter, Last Gasp (San Francisco, CA), 1993; World War Three Illustrated, edited by Scott Cunningham and others, Four Walls Eight Windows (New York, NY), 1995; Jill Bossert, Children's Book Illustration: Step-by-Step Techniques: A Unique Guide from the Masters, Society of Illustrators (New York, NY), 1998; Maud Lavin, Clean New World: Cultural Politics and Graphic Design, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 2001; and Le Commentaire de document iconographique: À l'epreuve orale de synthese, by Isabelle Gadoin, Du Temps (Paris, France), 2001.

SIDELIGHTS:

Stephen Kroninger is an illustrator known for creating collage-based art which has been animated and adapted for use in CD-ROMS, music videos, television, and the Internet. His work has been featured in major U.S. newspapers and magazines as well as in international publications. Kroninger lectures and holds workshops at colleges and universities, but he also takes time out of his schedule to provide collage demonstrations to elementary schools that include a hands-on collage-making activity. Among the picture books he has illustrated is Lenny Hort's poetry collection Tie Your Socks and Clap Your Feet: Mixed-up Poems, which a Publishers Weekly reviewer praised for its "edgy collages" and Booklist reviewer Stephanie Zvirin commended for Kroninger's "clever, colorful" cut-paper illustrations.

Kroninger's first picture book for young readers is If I Crossed the Road. With both text and illustrations by Kroninger, the book focuses on a young boy whose mother says he is too little to cross the street by himself. The boy then imagines the adventures he could have if he could cross the road. These adventures include visiting Grandpa, who is a cowboy and plays guitar; playing basketball with professional players; viewing an underwater world in the ocean; and venturing into the big city. At one point he rides a rocket ship into outer space to get ice cream from a green alien. After imagining such adventures, the boy comes back down to earth, and the reader learns that the most important reason to cross the street is to play with a friend. Ilene Cooper wrote in Booklist that "the oversize book's collages, created from magazine photos and cut paper, are funny and will be easily seen by everyone in story hour."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 15, 1997, Ilene Cooper, review of If I Crossed the Road, p. 703; August, 1998, John Peters, review of Psssst! It's Me … the Bogeyman, p. 2016; March 15, 2000, Stephanie Zvirin, review of Tie Your Socks and Clap Your Feet: Mixed-up Poems, p. 1383.

Publishers Weekly, September 22, 1997, review of If I Crossed the Road, p. 80; September 7, 1998, review of Psssst! It's Me … the Bogeyman, p. 94; April 17, 2000, review of Tie Your Socks and Clap Your Feet, p. 79.

School Library Journal, December, 1997, review of If I Crossed the Road, p. 94; September, 1998, John Sigwald, review of Psssst! It's Me … the Bogeyman, p. 178.