It’s the birthday of children’s book author Paul Fleischman (b. 1952), who won the Newbery Medal for Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices in 1989, just two years after his father, Sid Fleischman, won the Newbery for The Whipping Boy. Fleischman was born in Monterey, California, to Betty and Sid and raised in Santa Monica. [...]
It’s the birthday of Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth (1893-1986, #nicelonglife), who published over 90 books for children and adults, won the Newbery Medal in 1930 for The Cat Who Went to Heaven, and was a runner up for the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1968. Coatsworth was born in Buffalo, New York. The family was [...]
It’s the birthday of Scott O’Dell (1898-1989), who won the Newbery Medal, the Hans Christian Andersen Award, and a list of other children’s book awards as long as your arm—just big buttery handfuls of children’s book awards—and who is best known for his novel Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960). O’Dell was born Odell Gabriel [...]
Susan’s Almanac Project for March 25, 2019 It’s the birthday of Kate DiCamillo (b. 1964), two of whose 25 children’s books have won Newbery Medals and who has been writing beautifully about surviving loss and loneliness from her very first novel, Because of Winn-Dixie (2000). DiCamillo was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but the family moved [...]
It’s the birthday of children’s book author Louis Sachar (b. 1954), best known and loved for his wacky Wayside School series and for Holes, which won a ton of awards including the 1999 Newbery Medal and which was made into a movie in 2003 starring Sigourney Weaver and Jon Voight. Sachar was born in East [...]
It’s the birthday of Ellen Raskin (1928-1984, #diedtooyoung), author of The Westing Game (1978), a middle grade murder mystery novel that won the 1979 Newbery Medal and the undying devotion of a bazillion readers, including Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn, who rereads the novel once a year. The novel begins, “The sun sets in the [...]
It’s the birthday of Virginia Hamilton (1936-2002), whose more than 40 works of “liberation literature” spanned everything from science fiction to folk stories to biography and who was the first black author to win a Newbery Award (1975) and the first children’s author to win a MacArthur “genius” grant (1995). Hamilton was born in Yellow [...]
It’s the birthday of Irene Hunt (1907-2001), author of historical novels and best known for her Newbery Honor book, Across Five Aprils (1964), about a boy growing up during the Civil War. Hunt was 57 when this novel, her first, was published. Hunt was born in Pontiac, Illinois. Her father died of typhoid fever when [...]
It’s the birthday of western writer Mari Sandoz (b. in 1896 or 1901), whose unromantic and carefully researched portrayals of pioneer and Indian life were ahead of their time and elicited hate mail. Sandoz was born in a two-room shack in Nebraska. Her mother, Mary Elizabeth Fehr, was the fourth wife of her father, Jules [...]