Authors & Illustrators

Biographical information about writers and illustrators of books for young people.

Beatrix Potter and the Horn Book

Emma Thompson's new Peter Rabbit adventure next to Beatrix Potter's original.

We just posted “Peter Rabbit and the Tale of the Fierce Bad Publisher,” Caroline Fraser’s excellent article about Emma Thompson’s The Further Adventures of Peter Rabbit and Frederick Warne’s methods for getting around copyright laws in order to keep protecting its cash cow. Or bunny. (Cash bunny? Buck bunny?) As someone who occasionally needs to [...]

Five questions for Emily Jenkins

Emily Jenkins

Author Emily Jenkins seems equally at home in picture books and intermediate fiction (and even — shh! — in YA, under nom de plume E. Lockhart). Like several of Emily’s previous books, her latest, Water in the Park: A Book About Water & the Times of the Day (illus. by Stephanie Graegin; Schwartz & Wade/Random; [...]

Local children’s lit events for May

gashlycrumb tinies

Some kidlit happenings in and around Boston this month: The Edward Gorey House’s 2013 special exhibit “Edward Gorey’s Vinegar Works” opened for their 2013 season on April 18th. The exhibit covers the “three volumes of moral instruction” in Gorey’s Vinegar Works boxed set: The Insect God, The West Wing, and his best-known work, The Gashlycrumb [...]

Five questions for Jeanne Birdsall

june11_birdsall

The first book about the feisty Penderwick sisters, The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy, won the National Book Award in 2005. Since then, the family has expanded in soul-satisfying ways — as has fans’ love for the series. The third volume, The Penderwicks at Point Mouette, [...]

Anna Dewdney’s Fostering Lifelong Learners conference speech

dewdney_speech_post

My mother is a writer, and as a small child, I would wander into her office and look through the magazines scattered across her desk. I remember wondering why the magazines were called The Horn Book, because they didn’t seem to be about horns, and also why they had the neat covers, even though the [...]

More Than Just the Facts: A Hundred Years of Children’s Nonfiction

by James Cross Giblin There are now in Europe about ten thousand public and private vehicles that are self-moving. They are usually called “automobiles.”. . . It is thought that there are now about three hundred such vehicles in this country. The automobile is the coming vehicle. We shall see it in all our cities [...]

Not-So-Trivial Pursuits: The Wrong Plot

By James Cross Giblin Sometimes you think you’ve finished the research for a key section in a nonfiction book, and then something occurs that makes you realize you’ve got it all wrong. This happened to me recently in connection with a book I’m working on about silent screen star Lillian Gish and her discoverer and [...]

Remembering Elaine Konigsburg

Konigsburg_Silent to the Bone

We mourn the death (last Friday) of E.L. Konigsburg, who never wrote a book I didn’t want to read. (Not that I love them all, but even where she went wrong, she did so magnetically.) I remember a slightly uneasy conversation with Konigsburg’s editor Jean Karl right after Elaine had won her second Newbery Medal [...]

Profile of E. L. Konigsburg by Laurie Konigsburg Todd

Readers frequently ask where E. L. Konigsburg, my mother, gets her ideas. I’ll tell. Although Mom can detect the most subtle nuance in painting or prose, she never developed a musical ear. Knowing that, my brother Paul purchased several classical records and proceeded to give her a course in music appreciation. It is not surprising [...]

Profile of Elaine Konigsburg by David Konigsburg

Elaine Lobl Konigsburg was born in New York City but lived most of her precollege days in the small town of Farrell, Pennsylvania. Although she readily adapts to any environment, it is probable that the excitement of Manhattan will always appeal to her most. A keen observer, she delights in being bombarded by a multitude [...]