Alton Raible

About Alton Raible

Alton Raible (14 November 1918 to 19 December 2016) was an American painter, printmaker and book illustrator, known above all for illustrating thirteen novels by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, among them the Newbery Honor books The Egypt Game, The Headless Cupid and The Witches of Worm.

Raible was born in Modesto, California, and took an MFA at the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1950. He taught at the California School of Arts and Crafts in Oakland and then for more than 20 years at the College of Marin, where he chaired the art department. He exhibited at venues including Gump's and the Smithsonian Institution, and as a long-time birdwatcher he painted series of owls. His work is held by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art.

His partnership with Snyder ran from Season of the Ponies (1964) and The Velvet Room (1965) through The Egypt Game (1967), Eyes in the Fishbowl (1968), The Changeling (1970), The Headless Cupid (1971), The Witches of Worm (1972), the Green-sky trilogy Below the Root (1975), And All Between (1976) and Until the Celebration (1977), to A Fabulous Creature (1981). He also illustrated books by Anne M. Green and Patricia Miles Martin. He was nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1972 for The Headless Cupid.

For collectors: The Egypt Game was first published by Atheneum in 1967 with Raible's illustrations; it was a Newbery Honor book and won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1970. First editions of his other Snyder titles, particularly the Newbery Honor books, carry his art.