Tana Hoban

Who was Tana Hoban?

Tana Hoban was an American photographer and creator of children's books including many picture books without any words.

Tana Hoban was born in Philadelphia to immigrants from Russia. Her father, an advertising manager for Jewish Daily World, encourage a career and enrolled her in art classes when she was very young. In 1938 she earned afellowship to travel and study painting in Europe. Back in the U.S. she married photographer Edward E. Gallob in 1939 and started photography herself.

Hoban created picture books out of photos and thereby taught educational concepts such as signs and symbols, the alphabet, numbers, shapes, colors, animals, opposites, sizes and prepositions. Her early books were in black-and-white, but later books are in color. Beginning 1970 she wrote, designed, illustrated, and published 110 or more titles."

She died in 2006 at a hospice in Louveciennes, France, outside Paris. She had lived in Paris for the past 23 years. Her husband at the time, John G. Morris, had been photo editor at The New York Times.

She was the older sister of writer Russell Hoban.