On July 9, a luminary of the Woodland Pond retirement facility in New Paltz, is turning 100. Family members are gathering to celebrate a remarkable artistic legacy that spans not one but two generations. Both the birthday girl, Helen Cherry, and her daughter Lynne Cherry have had long and distinguished careers in the world of children’s books.
Born Helen Cogan in Philadelphia, the centenarian “started out in high school” creating drawings inspired by her own mother’s favorite magazines, says Lynne, and “got a scholarship to the Philadelphia College of Art, which was very prestigious.” After graduating, she sought work as an illustrator – then a male-dominated field – and found outlets for her talents at various children’s magazines that were popular at the time: Jack & Jill, Cricket, Highlights for Children.
Eventually Helen married and moved to Swarthmore and later, Carlyle, Pennsylvania with her husband. After giving birth to Lynne and her brothers Stephen and Michael, she decided to cut back on her commercial illustration work, which she had already been doing for 20 years.
But the art never stopped coming, and seeing her beautiful output inspired Lynne to take up pens, pencils and paints as well. “When I was a little kid, I was sitting at the table drawing while she was doing illustrations for Jack & Jill,” Lynne recalls. “I fell in her footsteps — and then she followed in my footsteps to become a children’s book illustrator later in life.”
After attending Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, Lynne found an agent and soon broke into children’s publishing, as a writer as well as an illustrator. She specialized in stories with conservationist themes, and in 1990 her 11th book, The Great Kapok Tree – written on the train between Washington, DC and New Haven, where she was pursuing a Master’s in History at Yale University – proved her major breakthrough. Reviewed in People Magazine, Time and on the front page of The New York Times Book Review, it went on to sell more than a million copies and inspire a stage adaptation for young audiences.
At the time that she wrote The Great Kapok Tree, Lynne Cherry was doing an internship at the World Wildlife Fund, and the organization’s president, Dr. Tom Lovejoy, was her mentor. Impressed with the manuscript, he sent her to a WWF research site in the Amazonian rainforest to study the local wildlife firsthand. That was the beginning of decades of global travel and research into environmental projects, resulting in books meant to help young people feel empowered to make positive change. A River Ran Wild, Flute’s Journey and How Groundhog’s Garden Grew are among her better-known titles. Partnering with photojournalist Gary Braasch to found a not-for-profit organization called Young Voices for the Planet, she has spent the latter part of her career making documentary films about environmental initiatives undertaken by youths around the globe.
Her mother’s inspiration was not forgotten, however. Once Lynne’s career became established, she encouraged Helen to return to work, helping her assemble a portfolio and enlisting the same agent who had helped her get started. Besides magazine illustrations, Helen found assignments illustrating textbooks, and soon made the leap to kid lit. Adopting the nom de plume of Helen Cogancherry to put some distance between her work and that of her by-then-famous daughter, Helen found success once again in a second career beginning at the age of 50.
Lynne estimates the total number of books that her mother has illustrated at somewhere between 30 and 40, in addition to extensive continuing work with Cricket magazine. History books for kids became one area of specialization, including The Floating House and Warm as Wool by Scott Russell Sanders. In the 1980s and ‘90s Helen also built a reputation for being willing to take on “books with subjects that are taboo,” according to her daughter, illustrating such groundbreaking titles as My Sister Is Different by Betty Ren Wright, Don’t Hurt Me, Mama by Muriel Stanek, I Am Not a Crybaby! by Norma Simon and Don’t Call Me Fatso by Barbara Phillips.
The influence of Helen’s style – gentle but meticulous, rich and expressive in detail – is plain in her daughter’s artwork. “She captures these emotions on the faces that are just so authentic,” Lynne says admiringly. While at age 99 Helen is no longer drawing, she still manages to inspire: “Her memory’s failing, but she still gives the greatest advice, words of wisdom.”
Lynne was a visiting scholar at the Benjamin Center at SUNY New Paltz for a year before the outbreak of the COVID pandemic. The Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook is another local educational institution where she has done a residency. Her brother Mike Cherry, a climbing guide, and sister-in-law Tracy Clark Cherry, a massage therapist, are both longtime New Paltz residents. Their mom has been a resident at Woodland Pond for the past decade.
Two birthday parties at the facility are planned, on July 9 and July 13, to enable scattered contingents of children and grandchildren to converge and celebrate a life well-lived. While these family events will not be open to the general public, Woodland Pond will host a book-signing and sale featuring Helen Cogancherry’s work — probably in the autumn, Lynne says.
Join the family! 
