Syd Hoff, 91; Cartoonist Wrote Children’s Books

Syd Hoff, veteran cartoonist for the New Yorker and creator of such indelible children’s books as “Danny and the Dinosaur” and “Sammy the Seal,” has died. He was 91.

Hoff died Wednesday at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, Fla., of pneumonia.

Inspired by praise from cartoonist Milt Gross for his innate ability to draw, young Sydney Hoff dropped out of high school at 16 and, lying about his age, enrolled in the National Academy of Design in his native New York.

When his natural comic touch marred his attempts at fine art, however, he followed instructors’ advice to rethink his future.

Hoff switched to penning satirical cartoons, and by age 18 had sold one to the New Yorker. The widely respected publication would showcase a total of 571 Hoff creations from 1931 to 1975.

In addition to the New Yorker, Hoff contributed cartoons to such magazines as Look, Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s and Playboy.

He utilized various mediums -- watercolors, crayon, washes, ink -- to create dumpling-shaped rounded characters, often patterned on people he encountered in the Jewish neighborhood of New York where he had grown up.

Over the years, Hoff published a dozen books of his cartoons and starred in a CBS television series, “Tales of Hoff,” telling stories and illustrating them on camera.

In 1939, the William Randolph Hearst Syndicate asked Hoff to create a comic strip for newspapers. He came up with “Tuffy,” a strip about a little girl, which he drew for a decade. From 1958 to 1977, he also drew the popular comic strip “Laugh It Off” for King Features Syndicate.

A secondary career developed when Hoff’s young daughter, Susan, suffered a hip disorder. To distract her from physical therapy, he drew some pictures, and started telling her a story -- inadvertently beginning his children’s book “Danny and the Dinosaur.” The tale, first published in 1958 and later made into a children’s video, describes a museum dinosaur who takes a day off and explores New York with a little boy astride his back.

The book was one of the earliest in the I Can Read series, a line of books for beginning readers. Hoff said in a 1998 interview with the Miami Herald that it was also the first to have introduced dinosaurs in material for children.

“Dinosaurs fascinated children just like any large creature -- the boogie man, King Kong, any huge thing that might be dangerous,” he said.

A few years earlier, the humorist had told the same newspaper he was so certain that he had instigated dinomania in youth-oriented entertainment media that “I have a theory that Steven Spielberg first saw ‘Danny and the Dinosaur’ before he made ‘Jurassic Park.’ If he had any conscience, he’d say to his secretary, ‘Make out a check for $2.5 million for this guy Syd Hoff.’ ”

After the 1958 book was reprinted in 1993, Hoff published “Happy Birthday, Danny and the Dinosaur!” in 1995 and then rounded out the trilogy with “Danny and the Dinosaur Go to Camp” in 1996.

Another of Hoff’s popular children’s books was “Sammy the Seal,” first published in 1959 and reprinted in 2000. Akin to the dinosaur, Sammy takes a break from the zoo to explore his neighborhood. Like most of the 60 or so books Hoff wrote and illustrated for children, it features a positive message and simple plot about animals befriended by children and turning into unlikely heroes.

Anne Hoppe, executive editor of HarperCollins’ children’s book division, told the Miami Herald after Hoff’s death that his books continued to sell over half a century because: “Syd was so good at humor for young readers and for creating big-hearted characters.”

Despite all the modern competition in entertainment, she said, “children are still very excited to be able to read. That magic hasn’t gone away.”

In addition to his children’s books, Hoff illustrated more than 20 children’s books written by others and more than 15 books -- mostly about drawing or cartooning -- for adults.

Little wonder that the anthology Contemporary Authors noted in its 2003 edition that “Syd Hoff ... could easily be ranked as one of the most prolific author/illustrator/graphic humorists of the 20th century.”

Hoff, widowed in 1994, is survived by one daughter, Bonnie Stillman, and two grandchildren.