The Bones in the Cliff

James Stevenson was born in Manhattan, New York on July 11, 1929. He graduated from Yale University. He was a reporter from Life magazine before being hired by The New Yorker in 1956. He drew 1,988 cartoons, 79 covers, and wrote and illustrated articles including Talk of the Town pieces for the magazine. He also drew editorial cartoons for The New York Times and in 2004 began an occasional series for the Op-Ed page entitled Lost and Found New York, which looked back on people and places of the past.

He wrote and/or illustrated more than 100 children's books including Don't You Know There's a War On, The Worst Person in the World, Higher on the Door, The Mud Flat Olympics, Yard Sale, The Mud Flat Mystery, What's Under My Bed, That Terrible Halloween Night, and Worse Than Willy. In 1987, he won the Caldecott Honor for When I Was Nine. He also wrote novels and an illustrated biography of Frank Modell, a fellow New Yorker cartoonist. He died of pneumonia on February 17, 2017 at the age of 87.

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