About the Author

Ingri Mortenson and Edgar d'Aulaire met at art school in Munich in 1921. Edgar's father was a noted Italian portrait painter, his mother a Parisian. Ingri, the youngest of five children, traced her lineage back to the Viking kings. The couple married in Norway, then moved to Paris. As Bohemian artists, they often talked about emigrating to America. "The enormous continent with all its possibilities and grandeur caught our imagination," Edgar later recalled. A small payment from a bus accident provided the means. Edgar sailed alone to New York where he earned enough by illustrating books to buy passage for his wife. Once there, Ingri painted portraits and hosted modest dinner parties. The head librarian of the New York Public Library's juvenile department attended one of those. Why, she asked, didn't they create picture books for children? The d'Aulaires published their first children's book in 1931. Next came three books steeped in the Scandinavian folklore of Ingri's childhood. Then the couple turned their talents to the history of their new country. The result was a series of beautifully illustrated books about American heroes, one of which, Abraham Lincoln, won the d'Aulaires the American Library Association's Caldecott Medal. Finally they turned to the realm of myths. The d'Aulaires worked as a team on both art and text throughout their joint career. Originally, they used stone lithography for their illustrations. A single four-color illustration required four slabs of Bavarian limestone that weighed up to two hundred pounds apiece. The technique gave their illustrations an uncanny hand-drawn vibrancy. When, in the early 1960s, this process became too expensive, the d'Aulaires switched to acetate sheets which closely approximated the texture of lithographic stone. In their nearly five-decade career, the d'Aulaires received high critical acclaim for their distinguished contributions to children's literature. They were working on a new book when Ingri died in 1980 at the age of seventy-five. Edgar continued working until he died in 1985 at the age of eighty-six.

Reviews

"Available once again, this beautifully lithographed collection of lore introduces children to some of traditional literature's bad boys (and girls)." --School Library Journal

“Over their nearly five-decade career, Ingri and Edgar d’Aulaire penned and illustrated nearly 30 books, winning them wide acclaim and several awards. Trolls, originally released in 1972, was among this lauded group. New York Review Books has now returned it to print, and we have two words to say about that: Thank you. Trolls combines charming tales from Norse folklore with a fantasy traveler’s guide to the hairy beasts. We learn about forest trolls, mountain trolls and bridge trolls—their habitats, habits and even number of heads. We meet three creatures who share a single removable eyeball, and cursed princesses who burp toads. But nothing’s too scary: The lithographed pictures have a warm, hand-drawn look that transforms all beasts from horrific to humorous. The press reprinted another of the couple’s classics last year, D’Aularies’ Book of Norse Myths, with a preface by novelist Michael Chabon. This new entry in the collection arrives without endorsement, but trust us, it doesn’t need one.” –Time Out New York Kids


“There are children whose drawings of even the most ferocious monsters still reflect a quality of their own innocence and sweet temperament. The same is true of the artwork of the d’Aulaires. No matter how fierce their subjects, they can endow them with a kind of vulnerability that is both touching and–especially in the case of trolls–ridiculous…Combining knowledgeableness with easy-going humor, the d’Aulaires work anecdote after anecdote into a kind of patchwork story-quilt. Each patch, while complete in itself, contributes to an over-all understanding of the Norwegian troll world, fragments of which have survived into today…[They] have written an authoritative book on trolls and created a nearly perfect picture book for children.”–The New York Times

“D’Aulaires’ Trolls, an informative Baedekar on the moss-grown mountains of Norway and their weird inhabitants of more than a century ago, exemplifies a happy balance of art and text…Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire have completed the legends and descriptions with fittingly grotesque color and black-and-white sketches of myriad trolls.”–The Washington Post

“The crayon-like drawings have a humorous ugliness, and in their own outlandish way are a delightful change from all the antiseptic ethnic literature being turned out with one eye on the ethnic dollar.”
–Christian Science Monitor

“This book represents the quintessence of the d’Aulaires’ art.”–Horn Book

“[A] real winner.”–Boston Globe

“The D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths taught a generation about the legends on which much of literature is based. Now their D’Aulaires’ Book of Trolls by Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire, first published in 1972, returns to print to shed light on another staple of Norway: the magical trolls, ‘as old and moss-grown as the mountains themselves,’ in all their diversity.”
—Publisher’s Weekly