From the Birthday Book

Our alphabetically-arranged Birthday Bios page features authors and illustrators, current and past, with short biographies.

We thank our author and illustrator biography researchers, volunteers who write these informative articles about authors and illustrators, past and present: Lois Thompson Bartholomew, Terri DeGezelle, Juli Friedberg, Heidi Grosch, Sydney Lange, Steve Mudd, Vicki Palmquist, Leslie Greaves Radloff, Karen Ritz, Mary Rude, Julie G. Schuster, Christina Semsch, Martha Valainis.

Patricia Lauber, who celebrates her birthday on February 5th, strives to "make science both an entertaining as well as an enriching experience for children." Titles such as Adventure At Black Rock Cave (1959) and Dinosaurs Walked Here and Other Stories Fossils Tell (1992) are tributes to this credo, and to her knack for detailed and extensive research.

With over 80 titles to her credit, this New York-born writer and former editor was a Newbery Honor winner in 1986 with Volcano: Eruption and Healing of Mount St. Helens.

—Heidi Grosch

Cinematic illustrator David Wiesner was born on February 5th, in Bridgewater, New Jersey. He was the youngest of five creative children and grew up in a household with abundant art supplies. His imagination was inspired by play, books, and the dinosaurs in The World Book Encyclopedia. He developed a love for detail, an admiration for the creative process, and a curiosity as to whose hand was behind the drawings, inspiring him to study art. Wiesner received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design, where two colleagues, Tom Sgouros and David Macauley, fostered his imaginative spirit.

Wiesner earned his first book contract, for Honest Andrew, the year after graduating. Wiesner has since published more than ten award-winning books, two of them Caldecott Honor Books. Tuesday received the prestigious Caldecott Medal in 1992 and The Three Little Pigs was the winner in 2002. Wiesner combines humor and creativeness with playfulness and a wry use of perspective, which solidifies into a detailed, imaginative style of telling stories with pictures.

Wiesner lives and creates in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

—Karen Ritz

Russell Hoban was born on February 4, 1925 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Jewish immigrants from the Ukraine. Hoban's father was a newspaper manager as well as the director for the Philadelphia drama guild so Russell was exposed to the arts at an early age. He began to write as young student and has won many prizes for his work. Mr. Hoban has written fiction and science fiction novels for adults that have won acclaim both here and in Great Britain. Riddley Walker, a post-apocalyptic novel, won the John W. Campbell Award and was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award.

His first children's novel The Mouse and His Child was published in 1968. One of Hoban's most loveable characters is Frances, who is the star of many beloved books. Frances had many things to say but maybe one of my favorites is, "That's how it is, Alice," said Frances. "Your birthday is always the one that is not now." from A Birthday for Frances.

Several of his children's books have been made into films or movies such as Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas which was made into a Jim Henson/Muppet TV special.

Russell lives with his second wife and they have three grown sons. He and his first wife had four children.

—Martha Valainis

Joan Lowery Nixon, born on February 3rd, 1927, was the only four-time recipient of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for the Best Juvenile Mystery and she often said that she simply had to write! She relates that her mother remembered that Joan would say, "I have a poem, write it down," even before she learned to read.

Well-known for her Orphan Train Adventures, she explained, "It was a part of history I hadn't known—that beginning in 1854, over 100,000 homeless children were rescued from the streets of New York City and sent by train to new homes in the West."

Another of her series tells the story of three teenagers who immigrated with their families from Russia, Ireland, and Sweden. Those are the Ellis Island novels.

Ms. Nixon's Edgar Award winners were: The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore (1980), The Seance (1981), The Other Side of Dark (1986) and The Name of the Game Was Murder (1994).

Honored with the 2002 Kerlan Award, more than eighty of her manuscripts are held by the Children's Literature Research Collection at the University of Minnesota. Ms. Nixon died on June 28, 2003.

—Martha Valainis

Walt Morey was born on February 3rd, 1907, in Washington state. He was raised near Eugene, Oregon, where there is now an elementary school named after him. He was a sickly child and a terrible student. By the age of thirteen he still had not read a book cover to cover. A teacher then turned around his interest in reading and, thusly, his life.

He became a successful prize fighter before setting up a typewriter in his bedroom to begin writing. He sat in, just listening, to a writer's group for years. He finally began his published writing career with magazine articles, short stories, and novelettes. He was well on his way when television came along and dramatically changed the publishing market. Morey didn't write for twelve years. An adventurous summer, working as a deep-sea diver in Alaska, revived his spirit and provided a cache of ideas. His dream career had finally begun in earnest.

Well known for books such as Gentle Ben, Kavik the Wolf Dog, and Deep Trouble, Morey is well-loved by generations of readers.

—Karen Ritz

Mary Casanova, born on February 2nd, in Duluth, Minnesota, grew up in a large family where much of her time was spent out-of-doors. Someone who loves nature and animals, many of her books revolve around those themes, including her first book, Moose Tracks, and one of her more recent books, When Eagles Fall.

In 2001, her books won both young readers categories in the Minnesota Book Awards: The Hunter and Curse of a Winter Moon.

Lately she has been exploring settings in other countries. A trip to Versailles, France gave authenticity to her book, Cecile: Gates of Gold. Mary traveled to Belize to get the details just right for her book Jess about a young girl who travels there with her archaeologist parents.

In 2006, Mary launches a new series, Dog Watch, about dog detectives in a northern Minnesota town. Mary and her husband live in a northern Minnesota town where they are training two horses and enjoying summer and winter sports of all kinds.

—Vicki Palmquist

Rebecca Caudill was born February 2, 1899 in Harlan County, Kentucky. She graduated from Wesleyan College and received her master's degree from Vanderbilt University in 1922. She taught English in high school and college and worked as an editor for a time. She published her first book for children, Barrie and Daughter, in 1943. She married James Ayars in 1931 and they lived in Urbana, Illinois with their two children. Well-known as an author who set many books in the Appalachia of her childhood, she was a loved and respected author in her home state of Kentucky, her adopted state of Illinois, and throughout the country. The schoolchildren of Illinois vote each year on their favorite book, which is given the Rebecca Caudill Award. Her book, Tree of Freedom, was a Newbery Honor Book in 1950. A Pocketful of Cricket was a Caldecott Honor Book in Ms. Caudill died in 1985. Seven of her manuscripts can be found at the Children's Literature Research Collection in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

—Vicki Palmquist

"It's easy to get ideas, but not easy to get good ideas." Jerry Spinelli, whose birthday is February 1st, finds ideas everywhere but is especially inspired by his young readers.

"Each kid is a population unto him or herself, and a child's bedroom is as much a window to the universe as an orbiting telescope in a philosopher's study."

Known for his Newbery-winning title Maniac Magee (1991), Newbery Honor winner Wringer (1998) and Stargirl (2002) Spinelli advises new writers to "write what you really care about." For him, it's the stuff of everyday life. "I think a person's life is a mixture of happy, sad, and funny. So I try to make my books that way too."

—Heidi Grosch

Born in Joplin, Missouri on February 1, 1902, Langston Hughes was an astoundingly prolific poet and writer, well-known today for being a part of the Harlem Renaissance and a premiere contributor to the American literary heritage. He wrote sixteen books of poems, two novels, three collections of short stories, four volumes of "editorial" and "documentary" fiction, twenty plays, children's poetry, musicals and operas, three autobiographies, a dozen radio and television scripts, and dozens of magazine articles. He was a newspaper columnist for more than twenty years, writing for The Chicago Defender and The New York Post. Already known as the Class Poet in eighth grade, but sought to please his father by attending Columbia University in engineering. His father was certain a writer could not earn a living. One of his best-loved poems is "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," written out of his sense of loss at being shuttled around to live with different family members after his parents divorced. His books include three autobiographies: Not Without Laughter (1930); The Big Sea (1940); I Wonder As I Wander (1956). Langston Hughes died in 1967. His residence at 20 East 127th Street in Harlem, New York has been given landmark status by the New York City Preservation Commission.

—Vicki Palmquist

Gerald McDermott, born on January 31st, is the creator of over 25 books and films. His unique approach of balancing modern art and traditional folk design was inspired by his work in film.

McDermott began taking classes at the Detroit Institute of Art at the age of four. He studied at a public high school for the gifted with an art curriculum based on Bauhaus principles. He was awarded a scholarship to Pratt Institute where he pursued interests in graphics and filmmaking. He became interested in archetypal mythology and integrating their cultural symbols into art. The result was a combination of stylized figures and abstract motifs that combined ancient imagery with contemporary design. McDermott's first book, Anansi the Spider, was written and adapted from his own animated film. It received the Caldecott Honor in 1973. Arrow to the Sun, his second book, was awarded the Caldecott Medal, establishing him as a contemporary book creator. He continues exploring myths and traditional tales and retelling them with bold strokes and dramatic flair..

—Karen Ritz

Cathy Camper, born on January 31st, in Madison, Wisconsin, is creatively inventive and inventively creative. Her first book for children is Bugs Before Time: Prehistoric Insects and Their Relatives. She has published articles in magazines such as Cricket, Giant Robot, and Wired, and she co-edits the magazine Sugar Needle, which is all about candy. Her seed art is well-known, often taking blue ribbons at the Minnesota State Fair. "Draw Tippy" (at left) is just one example of her varied subjects, and was used as cover art for the Twin Cities Reader (click here to see more). Another of Cathy's interests is creating tiny robots out of found objects. Cathy describes walking down Lake Street in Minneapolis and thinking, "there's all this junk...screws, pieces of plastic, wood, caps from juice bottles, etc. that no one wants, so I wanted to see if I could turn it into something people would want. The robots had some pretty distinct personalities. One was in the Foot in the Door Show 2000 at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts." Cathy has been working on her website (click here), making changes and including study guides, bug facts, links to prehistoric bug websites and more! A reference librarian at the Minneapolis Public Library, Cathy is currently writing fiction and has a YA novel in the works.

—Vicki Palmquist

Lloyd Chudley Alexander was born on January 30th. He was reading by the time he was three, and always with a great fondness for mythology. He didn't enjoy school, his grades weren't good, but he worked in a bank to earn his college tuition. He dropped out of college after one term and joined the US Army, serving in Army Intelligence in Europe during WWII. Alexander attended the University of Paris. There he met and married Janine Denni and the two of them moved to Pennsylvania to raise their daughter, Madeleine.

His first book was And Let the Credit Go, published in 1955.

It wasn't until 1963 that Time Cat was published, beginning his career as a children's book author. In 1969, the last of the Prydain Chronicles, The High King, was honored with the Newbery Award. The author of over forty children's books, he has earned the title of Grand Master of Fantasy.

Mr. Alexander died in 2007.

—Vicki Palmquist

Allan W. Eckert is the author of 39 books and has been nominated seven times for a Pulitzer Prize. He was born in Buffalo, NY and raised in the Chicago area. He attended Ohio State University and the University of Dayton. His writings have included a series of children's fantasy adventures entitled The Mesmerian Annals. The Phantom Crystal and The Witching Well are works in progress in the series.

Eckert is known as an historian, naturalist, novelist, poet, screenwriter, and playwright. He designed and wrote the popular magazine courses for Writer's Digest Magazine – "The Writer's Digest Course in Article Writing" and "The Writer's Digest Course in Short Story Writing."

He lives and works in Bellefontaine, Ohio and celebrates his birthday on January 30th.

—Karen Ritz

Bill Peet was born in Grandview, Indiana on January 29, 1915 and spent several of his boyhood years on his grandfather's farm. He taught himself to sketch as a young boy when some photographs he took of zoo animals failed to develop. Peet worked briefly for a greeting card company before being hired by Disney in 1937. He became Walt Disney's greatest story man, profoundly influencing some of the studio's greatest features and creating some of its most memorable characters. He worked on many of the classic films— "Dumbo," "Cinderella," "Alice in Wonderland," "Peter Pan," "Sleeping Beauty," 101 Dalmations," "Sword in the Stone," and "Song of the South."

Leaving Disney Studios in 1964 after completing story and character work on "The Jungle Book," Peet launched himself into another successful career as a popular author and illustrator of children's books. Working in pen-and-ink and crayon, his first book, Hubert's Hair Raising Adventure, was published in 1959. With a rare combination of excellent storytelling and appealing enduring illustrations, he went on to publish 34 more books. Other favorites include Chester the Worldly Pig and The Wump World. Bill Peet was awarded a Caldecott Honor in 1990 for his Bill Peet, An Autobiography.

Peet's life was spilling his imagination out in drawings until he died in May of 2002.

—Karen Ritz

"As far back as I can remember I did nothing but draw."

It is no surprise, then, that Rosemary Wells has made a living as an author and illustrator, contributing over 60 titles to the children's literary world. Most of her books are of animals, which she says she draws best, and her work appeals to a wide range of ages and interests.

You may recognize titles like the Max and Ruby series, Noisy Nora (1973), Unfortunately Harriet (1972), The Man in the Woods (2000) or Mary on Horseback: Three Mountain Stories (1998).

In her opinion, "emotion and character and humor are what makes a children's book right."

—Karen Ritz