LYME, N.H. (AP) – Award-winning illustrator Trina Schart Hyman has died after a battle with cancer. She was 65.

Hyman illustrated more than 150 books, including fairy tales and Authurian legends. She won the Caldecott Medal, the highest honor for children’s books authors and artists, four times.

Hyman once said she was an illustrator before she knew what one was. Her work was found in works by authors including Dylan Thomas, John Updike, and re-released stories by Mark Twain.

She grew up in a rural area north of Philadelphia and after living in Boston and Sweden, moved to Lyme in 1966. She died Friday.

Despite her numerous books, Hyman might well be remembered for putting her stamp on the children’s magazine “Cricket.” She was the magazine’s art director from 1972 to 1979.

When she won the Caldecott Medal in 1985 for illustrating “Saint George and the Dragon,” she said she thought and even dreamed about her characters.

“I think about the story and about what it means and about how it can be brought to life in pictures,” she said. “I think about the characters and what makes them tick and where they’re coming from and where they might be going to.”

Many of the characters were composites of people she met while living in the Upper Valley, said her daughter, Katrin Tchana, of Fairlee, Vt. Katrin herself appeared as many characters, as did the artist’s grandchildren.

Her other Caldecott Medals came in 1984 for a retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood,” in 1990 for “Herschel and the Hanukkah Goblins” and in 2000 for “A Child’s Calendar,” a book of Updike’s poems.

Until entering the hospital two weeks ago, Hyman worked in her “tiny, messy” studio, heated by a little wood-burning stove.