John Robert McCloskey (September 15, 1914[2] – June 30, 2003) was an American writer and illustrator of children's books.
[6] His work on the totem pole is said to have led to him being chosen to create the bas relief and cast aluminum pieces decorating the Hamilton Municipal building in 1934, when he was 19.
The story, set in Boston, Massachusetts, features a mallard pair that nests on an island in the Charles River.
Sculptor Nancy Schön created a bronze statue of Mrs. Mallard and the ducklings in 1987, installed along a walkway between pond and street.
In 1964, film producer Morton Schindel and Weston Woods Studios made Robert McCloskey, an 18-minute documentary that is sometimes screened in art schools.
It shows McCloskey sitting in Boston Public Garden intercut with pages from his sketchbook drawings for Make Way for Ducklings, while the illustrator recounts experiences that influenced his work and discusses the relationship of craftsmanship to inspiration.
[16] In Boston Public Garden a sculpture of a family of nine ducks, by the sculptor Nancy Schön, installed in 1987, commemorates McCloskey's Make Way for Ducklings.
[22] In Boothbay Harbor, Maine, in the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, another sculpture by Schön, dedicated in 2010 and known as Sal's Bear, depicts a baby bear and a nearby spilled pail of blueberries, based on the drawings in McCloskey's Blueberries for Sal.