2008Honorary Degree
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Schindel, who turned 90 in January, is still active as founder and president of Weston Woods Institute, a non-profit organization for the development of innovative educational and cultural communications that enrich the lives of children.
Born and raised in Orange, N.J., Schindel attended the University of Pennsylvania, earning his bachelor's degree in 1939 from the Wharton School of Finance. He added his master's degree in curriculum from Teachers College, Columbia University in 1949.
Schindel founded Weston Woods Studios Inc. in Weston, Conn., in 1953. He has dedicated his life to adapting classic children's books to audiovisual media so that all children, including beginning and reluctant readers, can be motivated to love books and become lifelong readers. Among the company's hundreds of productions are many titles that have become award-winning classic films.
To retain the author's/illustrators' intent in each book, Schindel pioneered and named the "iconographic technique," which is now standard in animated filmmaking. Weston Woods films were viewed by millions of children on the Captain Kangaroo Show, CBS's first major television program for children, from the late 1950s to the l970s. This contributed to making the name Weston Woods as recognizable as Disney to the elementary school and library communities internationally. Purdue's College of Education has included a study of Weston Woods films in its undergraduate course in children's media.
When Scholastic Inc. purchased Weston Woods Studios in l996, Schindel created the Weston Woods Institute to perpetuate the innovative modality of his career. An example of this endeavor is the Children's Literacy Project, where the shells of custom-designed recreational vehicles are outfitted with whatever equipment and materials are needed to achieve a specific educational or cultural teaching/learning objective.
A diverse roster of organizations has honored Schindel. Most recently, he received the 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Connecticut Center for the Book, associated with the Library of Congress, and a specially designed plaque from the International Storytelling Center to acknowledge his contribution to "Blazing New Trails for Storytelling."
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