About The Authors
Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957) is best known for her series of well-loved children's books,
including Little House In The Big Woods and Little House On The Prairie
Born Laura Elizabeth Ingalls in Pepin, Wisconsin, Ingalls Wilder spent her early life
moving from place to place. Her father called himself a pioneer man and dreamed
of going West to explore and settle on unknown territory. The Ingalls family
moved from Missouri, to Kansas, to Wisconsin, to Minnesota, to Iowa and finally
settled in De Smet, South Dakota, where her father claimed a homestead.
It was at the age of 65 that Wilder published her first book entitled Little
House in the Big Woods. This first book and those to follow tell a near
autobiographical tale of her own childhood.
Read more at Thomson Gale
Find books by Laura Ingalls Wilder at
Ogden Nash (1902 - 1971) was an American poet was best known for surprising, pun-like rhymes.
He often wrote in a signature verse form which creates a comic effect with pairs of lines that rhyme,
but that are of dissimilar length and irregular meter.
Born in Rye, New York, nash moved often as a boy because of his father's business
obligations. After dropping out of Harvard in 1921, Nash worked his way through
a series of jobs, eventually landing a position as an editor at Doubleday
publishing house, where he first began to write poetry.
When Nash wasn’t writing poems, he made guest appearances
on comedy and radio shows and toured the United States and England,
giving lectures at colleges and universities.
Read more at Wikipedia.org
Find books by Ogden Nash at
Ron Carlson grew up in Salt Lake City. He is the author of seven books of
fiction, most recently The Speed Of Light, At the Jim Bridger and The Hotel Eden.
He is a professor of English at
Arizona State University.
Read more at Arizona State University
Harper Collins Books
Find books by Ron Carlson at
Eric A. Kimmel (1946 - ) was born in Brooklyn, NY. He graduated from
Lafayette College in
1967 with a bachelor's degree in English literature. He has taught courses
in language arts, children's literature, and storytelling at a variety of schools
(including our own Portland State
University).
His first book came out in 1974. Since then he has published over fifty
titles, many of which have won numerous state awards, appeared on school and
library recommended lists, and won prestigious awards such as the Caldecott
Honor Medal and the Sydney Taylor Picture Book Award.
Read more at EricAKimmel.com
Find The Hanukkah Guest and other books by Eric Kimmel at
Harper Lee (1926 - ) is best known for her 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning
novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Born in Monroeville, Alabama, Lee was the
youngest of four children. A voracious reader and admitted tomboy, Harper
and her siblings and friends improvised imaginative adventures. After
graduating from high school in Monroeville, Harper attended
Huntingdon College in
Montgomery, and the University of
Alabama.
She worked for a while in New York as an airline reservation clerk, but soon,
with the emotional and financial support of friends, determined to pursue a
career in writing. In 1959, Lee worked with Truman Capote as an assistant for
his novel, In Cold Blood.
In 1957 she submitted a group of stories J. P. Lippincott & Co.
Encouraged by her editor to work the stories into a novel, she
produced To Kill a Mockingbird, which was published in 1960.
To Kill a Mockingbird was an immediate best-seller and won her
great critical acclaim, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961.
Lee was overwhelmed with the immediate success of this first book. Since that
time, Lee has granted virtually no requests for interviews or public
appearances, and with the exception of a few short essays, has published no
further writings.
Read more at Wikipedia.org
Find a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird at
Joan Walsh Anglund (1926-) became successful with her first book,
A Friend Is Someone Who Likes You, in 1958. She's been making books
featuring these same round-faced mouthless characters ever since, and her
popularity continues to grow.
Read more at Loganberry Books
Find books by Joan Walsh Anglund at
Richard Egielski his illustrated several books in collaboration with other
writers, and individually. In 1987 he was the winner of the Caldecott Medal for his
illustrations in Hey, Al, written with Arthur Yorinks.
Read more at Reading is Fundamental
Find books by Richard Egielski and his collaborators at
Stephen Leacock (1869-1944) was born in Swanmore, Hampshire, England,
the third of a family of eleven children. The Leacock family emigrated to
Canada in 1876 and settled on a 100-acre farm just a few miles south of Lake
Simcoe near the village of Sutton, Ontario.
After his schooling at Upper
Canada College, the University of Toronto,
and the Strathroy Collegiate Institute
in western Ontario he taught at Uxbridge High School in Uxbridge, Ontario and
Upper Canada College. He felt, however, that teaching was "a dead end into
which young men were trapped by the initial chance to make what looked like a
good salary..." During the 1890s Leacock supplemented his income by,
submitting articles to various magazines. His first humorous article was
published in the Toronto humour magazine Grip in 1894.
Leacock published his first humorous book, Literary Lapses, in 1910.
The book sold out quickly. Literary Lapses helped propel Leacock to become
known as one of the most sought-after authors in the English-speaking world.
Leacock followed up his success with Nonsense Novels (1911), Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town
(1912), and Arcadian Adventures With The Idle Rich (1914).
Leacock's real interest, however, was in the field of economics and political
science. He wrote many books and lectured on these subjects, and became known as
much for his expertise on economic theory as his humorism.
Leacock died on March 28, 1944 from throat cancer. The "Stephen Leacock
Medal for Humour" has been awarded yearly since 1947 to the best humorous book
by a Canadian author. In June 1968, Stephen Leacock's home at Old Brewery Bay
was declared a national monument by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of
Canada.
Read more at The National Archive of Canada
Find books and writings by Stephen Lecock at
Dylan Thomas (1914 - 1953) Welsh poet Dylan Thomas has become an iconic
figure for lovers of literature and aspiring poets. Born in Swansea, Wales in
1914, Thomas' parents were both speakers of the Welsh language and had strong
links to Welsh cultures and customs, but brought up their children to speak
only English. As a boy, Dylan lived in the western suburbs of
Swansea, but his childhood summers were mostly spent at his aunt's
dairy farm in Carmarthenshire. These holidays would later inspire the poem
Fern Hill, published in 1946.
While he was a young boy, Dylan's mother read to him whenever she could,
or gave him comics to read alone. She later claimed it was with these that
the child taught himself to read. His father read Shakespeare aloud to his son,
which introduced him to the colors and sounds of language.
Both parents encouraged the young Dylan to write, and in January 1927 he
sold a poem, His Requiem, to the Western Mail newspaper in Cardiff.
In 1931 he left school, and got a job as a reporter for the South Wales Evening
Post.
1933 was the year in which his poetry began to receive greater exposure.
He was published in periodicals, and a submission to a BBC poetry
competition resulted in it being read on air. The main themes of Thomas'
poetry were nostalgia, life, death, and lost innocence. He wrote often about
his past as a boy or as a young man.
In 1937 Thomas married Caitlin Macnamara.
The two settled in Laugharne, Wales in 1938. They quarreled often over
Dylan's drinking and each other's infidelities. On his final trip to New York,
Thomas was already referring to Caitlin as 'my widow'.
Thomas died in New York in 1953.
Read more at The BBC's Biography of Dylan Thomas
Explore the poetry and writings of Dylan Thomas at
Clement Clark Moore (1779 - 1863) Although Clement Clark Moore is best known
for his Christmas classic, 'Twas the Night Before
Christmas, or A Visit From St. Nicholas, he wrote many other works,
including a political pamphlet, a textbook, poetry, and more. Moore was born
in New York City in 1779 to an Episcopal minister and his wife. He was the only
child, and his early education was conducted at home. He graduated from
Columbia University in 1798.
Legend has it that Moore, then a professor of classics at the General
Theological Seminary in New York City, composed A Visit from St. Nicholas for his
family on Christmas Eve of 1822, during a sleigh-ride home from Greenwich
Village. He supposedly drew inspiration for the elfin, pot-bellied St.
Nick in his poem from the roly-poly Dutchman who drove his sleigh that day.
But from what we know of Clement Moore, it's much more likely that he found his
imagery in literary sources, most notably Washington Irving's Knickerbocker
History (1809) and a Christmas poem published in 1821 called The Children's
Friend. Moore refused to have the poem published despite its
enthusiastic reception by everyone who read it. His argument that it was
beneath his dignity evidently fell on deaf ears, because the following
Christmas A Visit from St. Nicholas found its way after all into the
mass media when a family member submitted it to an out-of-town newspaper.
Moore would not acknowledge authorship of it until fifteen years later,
when he reluctantly included it in a volume of collected works. He
referred to the poem "a mere trifle."
Recently, new research by Professor Don Foster of Vassar College has
cast doubt on Clement Clarke Moore's authorship of A Visit from St.
Nicholas. Whether Moore was the true author of the piece or not, it has
stood the test as an enduring holiday classic.
Clement Clark Moore died on July 10, 1863, in Newport, Rhode Island,
at his summmer home.
Read more at About.com
Find a copy of the classic poem at
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