Molly Bang

Molly Garrett Bang (born December 29, 1943) is an American illustrator.

For her illustration of children's books she has been a runner-up for the American Caldecott Medal three times and for the British Greenaway Medal once.

Her education includes attendance at Wellesley College, reception of a Master of Arts degree from the University of Arizona (1969) and Harvard University (1970).

Bang began writing children's books after a failed stint as a reporter for The Baltimore Sun.

At first illustrating folk tales, she turned eventually to her own stories.

The ability to carry emotion in pictures is of particular interest to her; her one book for adults, Picture This (1991) is specifically about the practical ways pictures work.

Her wordless picture book The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher is notable for its use of negative space and the way Bang contrasts bright colors against grey.

In the 2000s, Bang and her daughter Monika Bang-Campbell collaborated as illustrator and writer to create three picture books featuring Little Rat, a girl rat who learns with courage or practice to sail, to ride a horse, and to play the violin.

Bang lives in California, previously she resided in Massachusetts.

Announced June 2015, her 1996 picture book Goose is the 2016 Phoenix Picture Book Award winner – that is, named by the Children's Literature Association the best English-language children's picture book that did not win a major award when it was published twenty years earlier.

Bang was born in Princeton, New Jersey to illustrator Betsy Bang and medical researcher Fred Bang.