Judy Blume

Judy Blume

Judy's Official Bio

Judy Blume spent her childhood in Elizabeth, New Jersey, making up stories inside her head. She has spent her adult years in many places doing the same thing, only now she writes her stories down on paper. Adults as well as children will recognize such Blume titles as: Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret; Blubber; Just as Long as We're Together; and the five book series about the irrepressible Fudge. She has also written three novels for adults, Summer Sisters; Smart Women; and Wifey, all of them New York Times bestsellers. More than 85 million copies of her books have been sold, and her work has been translated into thirty-two languages. She receives thousands of letters a year from readers of all ages who share their feelings and concerns with her.

Lloyd Alexander

Lloyd Alexander

Biography Lloyd Alexander

Few writers have inspired as much affection and interest among readers young and old as Lloyd Alexander. Few writers have won so many literary honors. At one point however it seemed unlikely that he would ever be a writer at all.

Katherine Paterson

Katherine Paterson

Katherine’s Biography

Katherine Womeldorf Paterson is the author of more than 30 books, including 16 novels for children and young people. She has twice won the Newbery Medal, for Bridge to Terabithia in 1978 and Jacob Have I Loved in 1981. The Master Puppeteer won the National Book Award in 1977 and The Great Gilly Hopkins won the National Book Award in 1979 and was also a Newbery Honor Book. For the body of her work she received the Hans Christian Anderson Award in 1998, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in 2006, and in 2000 was named a Living Legend by the Library of Congress.

She is a vice-president of the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance and is a member of the board of trustees for Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is also a honorary lifetime member of the International Board of Books for Young People and an Alida Cutts lifetime member of the US section, USBBY. She is the 2010-2011 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.

The Patersons have four grown children and seven grandchildren. Katherine currently resides in Vermont with her faithful dog, Pixie.

Madeleine L’Engle

Madeleine L’Engle

About Madeleine L’Engle (1918-2007)

Madeleine was born on November 29th, 1918, and spent her formative years in New York City. Instead of her school work, she found that she would much rather be writing stories, poems and journals for herself, which was reflected in her grades (not the best). However, she was not discouraged.

At age 12, she moved to the French Alps with her parents and went to an English boarding school where, thankfully, her passion for writing continued to grow. She flourished during her high school years back in the United States at Ashley Hall in Charleston, South Carolina, vacationing with her mother in a rambling old beach cottage on a beautiful stretch of Florida Beach.

Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll

About  Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll is well known throughout the world as the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Behind the famous pseudonym was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a mathematical lecturer at Oxford University with remarkably diverse talents.

Born in 1832, in Daresbury, Cheshire, he spent his early life in the north of England (at Daresbury, Cheshire and in Croft, Yorkshire). He spent his adult life in Oxford and died at Guildford in 1898. Besides the Alice books, he wrote many others including poems, pamphlets and articles. He was a skilled mathematician, logician and pioneering photographer and he invented a wealth of games and puzzles which are of great interest today. Through his range of talents he has acquired great respect and has a large following. 

J.K. Rowling

Joanne Rowling

Biography

was born in July 1965 at Yate General Hospital in England and grew up in Chepstow, Gwent where she went to Wyedean Comprehensive.

Jo left Chepstow for Exeter University, where she earned a French and Classics degree, her course including one year in Paris. As a postgraduate she moved to London and worked as a researcher at Amnesty International among other jobs. She started writing the Harry Potter series during a delayed Manchester to London King’s Cross train journey, and during the next five years, outlined the plots for each book and began writing the first novel.

Philip Pullman

Philip Pullman

About Philip Pullman

 I was born in Norwich in 1946, and educated in England, Zimbabwe, and Australia, before my family settled in North Wales. I received my secondary education at the excellent Ysgol Ardudwy, Harlech, and then went to Exeter College, Oxford, to read English, though I never learned to read it very well.

I found my way into the teaching profession at the age of 25, and taught at various Oxford Middle Schools before moving to Westminster College in 1986, where I spent eight years involved in teaching students on the B.Ed. course. I have maintained a passionate interest in education, which leads me occasionally to make foolish and ill-considered remarks alleging that not everything is well in our schools. My main concern is that an over-emphasis on testing and league tables has led to a lack of time and freedom for a true, imaginative and humane engagement with literature.

Clive Staples Lewis

Clive Staples Lewis

ABOUT C. S. LEWIS

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University until 1954, when he was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement.

Lewis wrote more than thirty books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. C. S. Lewis's most distinguished and popular accomplishments include Mere Christianity, Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and the universally acknowledged classics in The Chronicles of Narnia. To date, the Narnia books have sold over 100 million copies and been transformed into three major motion pictures. 

E.L. Konigsburg

E.L. Konigsburg

Elaine Lobl Konigsburg

(February 10, 1930 – April 19, 2013)

Another two-time Newbery Medal winner, E.L. Konigsburg is also the only person to have won both a Newbery Medal and a Newbery Honor (which is basically the award’s honorable mention) in the same year — for the first two books she ever wrote, no less: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth, both submitted at once to her no-doubt thrilled publisher. A full 29 years later, in 1997, she won the medal again for The View from Saturday, another classic. Her work effortlessly describes the interior lives of children trying to discover their own personalities, perhaps because she has based many of her characters on her own children and students, who were, she says, “softly comfortable on the outside and solidly uncomfortable on the inside.” Perhaps one of the reasons that her work is so enduring is that that quality never quite completely goes away.

Lois Lowry

Lois Lowry

Lois Lowry:

whose novels consistently blow us away, is one of only five authors who have been awarded the Newbery Medal twice — once for Number the Stars in 1990, and again for The Giver in 1993 (two more of her doubly awarded peers are also on our list!). Lowry does not shy away from disturbing or difficult topics — the Holocaust, dystopian futures, terminal illness — but instead addresses them head on with grace and captivating ability. Two decades later, we’re still arguing with our friends over whether Jonas dies or finds salvation at the end of The Giver. The question, like the book, still feels urgent, which is how we know she’s one of the best.

Astrid Lindgren

A short biography

Astrid Anna Emilia Lindgren

grew up shortly after the turn of the Century at the Näs homestead near Vimmerby, in the county of Småland. Her childhood is a happy time, with the love of her parents providing her constant security. Astrid and her three siblings enjoy their games in the fantastic playground the Näs property provides. But their days consist of other things too, besides playing. All available labour is needed on a farm, and the Ericsson children share the toil with the maids and farmhands. One of the farmhands has a daughter called Edit. It is in her kitchen that Astrid hears the fairytale which begins to awaken her hunger for books – a passion that lasts a lifetime.

At school, Astrid is good at writing and after getting a composition published in the Vimmerby Times earns the nickname, Vimmerby’s Selma Lagerlöf. She later joins the paper in a voluntary capacity. After two years with the paper she quits. Astrid is now eighteen years of age and pregnant. She does not wish to live her life together with the child’s father, nor does she want to stay in Vimmerby.