Following is the text of the 2010 induction of Chris Van Allsburg into The Illustrators Hall of Fame.

If Chris Van Allsburg is the fish that got away, then I'm the angler that couldn't tell the difference between a perch and a pike. In the late 1970s, when I was art director of The New York Times OpEd page, Chris's wife, Lisa, brought the newly minted portfolio of her husband to my office hoping that I would assign him an illustration. The work was amazing, but it was not illustration. In fact, it was mostly wood sculpture (a bit reminiscent of H.C. Westerman's surrealist wood boxes). Van Allsburg, who had graduated with an MFA degree in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1975, had already ha...