Lisl Weil Papers

Lisl Weil was born in Vienna, Austria. She attended school there, learning to draw as a child and also gained a love of music that would appear in some of her books. She worked as an illustrator for various European periodicals before coming to the United States in 1939, where during the 1940s she continued to work as an artist and illustrator. In 1946, Lisl Weil illustrated her first children's books, Doll House by Marion Moss and her own retelling of Jacoble Tells the Truth. Throughout her long career, Lisl Weil has illustrated dozens of children's books, many of them her own stories. Lisl Weil works in a variety of media and is perhaps best known for her ink and felt pen illustrations. Her illustrations are also noted for their sense of humor that captures a story's mood, and she has said that she "loves to make children feel happy and positive," and have them "laugh along with her." Along with her illustrations for humorous stories, Weil has also illustrated non-fiction books including a number that introduce children to a variety of subjects such as music in her book The Magic of Music, and others that invite young readers to solve picture puzzles and rebuses such as the ones found in her Owl and Other Scramblesand Mother Goose Picture Riddles. Lisl Weil has also illustrated a number of contemporary children's stories and E. W. Hildick's popular "McGurk" mysteries for young readers.