Illustrator, Walter Cunningham came to Australia at 14 years of age and joined the staff of John Sands in 1926. Beginning as a messenger boy he became a staff artist and then manager of the art department. He won a NSW scholarship for drawing in 1928 and studied at the National Art School where he later taught. During the 1940s Cunningham drew a comic-strip
Kaark the Crow for the
Sydney Morning Herald and collaborated with Leslie Rees in a number of successful books for children including the inaugural Children's Book Council Book of the Year Award, 1946, winner
The Story of Karrawingi, the Emu (John Sands, [1946]). Stella Lees and Pam Macintyre in the
Oxford Companion to Australian Children's Literature (Oxford University Press, 1993) comment 'Cunningham's expert watercolours in effective double-page layouts were innovations during the 1940s, and marked a development in children's book design.'
Cunningham served terms as president with the NSW branch of the Children's Book Council of Australia, and as a judge for the Australian Children's Book of the Year Awards. He married the illustrator
Noela Young (q.v.).
