Randolph Caldecott

Randolph Caldecott's sixteen picture books of nursery rhymes and comic verses, printed in colour by Edmund Evans from 1878, made pictures move the story along instead of decorating it: a line of text, then a lively drawing showing what the words leave out. Maurice Sendak called him the inventor of the modern picture book, and America's top award for picture-book illustration, the Caldecott Medal, is named after him.