Tana Hoban, 88; Author of Children’s Books Used Her Photographs as Illustrations

Tana Hoban, a photographer and author who produced dozens of illustrated books for children, died Jan. 27 at a hospice near Paris. She was 88 and had had a series of strokes and other ailments.

Hoban, who had lived in Paris for more than 20 years, began her career as a photographer in the 1940s but did not publish her first children’s book, “Shapes and Things,” until 1970.

She published more than 50 books, most with simple titles such as “Count and See,” “Circles, Triangles, and Squares” and “What Is It?” More than 2 million copies of her books have been sold.

Hoban illustrated her books with starkly beautiful photographs of objects from everyday life that appeal to children and adults.

The books typically contained little or no text and sometimes featured cutout pages that exposed only a portion of a photograph. Readers were encouraged to identify the object before turning the page to view the full image.

Most of her books were geared toward children 5 or younger, helping them to identify objects by sight and name. They also helped children explore the world by introducing concepts such as counting, geometry, animals, machines, colors and textures.

Hoban kept a camera with her at all times, and her photographs of everyday scenes triggered the idea for her children’s books.

“A neat row of garbage cans sitting in the bright sun inspired me to do the counting book, ‘Count and See,’ ” Hoban wrote in an autobiographical essay in 1979. “All but half a dozen of my books come from such perceptions of daily surroundings, organized so as to give the child a sense of verbal relationships, or concepts.”

Hoban was born in Philadelphia and studied art as a young girl. After graduating from Philadelphia’s School of Design for Women -- now Moore College of Art and Design -- she received a fellowship to England and the Netherlands in 1938 to study painting.

She worked briefly as a graphics artist and illustrator before becoming a successful advertising and editorial photographer. Her pictures appeared in Life, Look, McCall’s and other magazines in the 1940s.

Her photography was included in a group exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1949 along with works by such noteworthy photographers as Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange and Helen Levitt. Hoban also was featured in the landmark 1955 exhibition “The Family of Man,” curated by renowned photographer Edward Steichen.

In 1959, Hoban was named one of the country’s top 10 female photographers. She wrote books about photographing children and participated in the 1960 White House Conference on Children and Youth.

In 1983, she and her second husband, John Morris, a noted photo editor for the Washington Post, New York Times and Life magazine, moved to Paris. She continued to produce books until 2000.

In Paris, Hoban was at the center of a lively expatriate community. With her husband, she formed a group called Americans for Peace and twice led protest marches at the U.S. Embassy.

In addition to her husband, she is survived by a daughter, Miela Ford, from her first marriage, which ended in divorce; a brother, novelist Russell Hoban of London; a granddaughter; and a great-granddaughter.