Obituary

Syd Hoff

Prolific children's cartoonist

The comic artist Syd Hoff, who has died aged 91, is best known for something which evolved from a curved line doodled in the middle of the night. It was drawn after he had woken with concern for his daughter's hip disorder. The line metamorphosed into a dinosaur, and so was born the 10m-selling Danny And The Dinosaur (1958) - which prompted a series of such books featuring animals.

In Hoff's simple lines, a curve can serve as a smile or a snake, they can be read by four-year-olds and yet touch adults. His work survives into our more complex times and Danny has also been an animated video.

Hoff was born in the Bronx in New York City, the son of a salesman. It was in 1938 that he was so inspired by praise from cartoonist Milt Gross, on a visit to his high school, that he dropped out and, dodging the question of his age, enrolled, at 16, at New York's National Academy of Design. Within two years, he had sold a cartoon to the New Yorker magazine.

Hoff's cartoons, often featuring sharp-witted children, form a wry chronicle of the preoccupations of the humble neighbourhood where he had grown up, and a dozen collections of his work were published in America.

He thrived on work. For the Hearst newspaper syndicate in 1939 he created a strip about a girl called Tuffy that ran for a decade, while Laugh It Off lasted from 1958 to 1978. He created about 60 books - many featuring Henrietta, a fine species of poultry - illustrated many more, appeared on the 1950s television show Tales Of Hoff, had a sideline in stories for the anthologies by Alfred Hitchock and Ellery Queen and - remembering Milt Gross - was abundantly generous with advice. In 1983, he published The Young Cartoonist: The ABC Of Cartooning.

"I yearn to follow in the tradition of Daumier and Nast," he wrote in his collection Editorial And Political Cartooning (1976), "with a large "S" (for Supercartoonist) emblazoned on my chest!"

Indeed, for while he relished comedy's tragic roots, his own work settled for the engagingly wistful.

He was married in 1937 to Dora Berman, who died in 1994. One daughter, Susan, predeceased him. He is survived by a second daughter, Bonnie.

· Syd Hoff, cartoonist and illustrator; born September 4 1912; died May 12 2004

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