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.

Born on February 9, 1908, in Rotterdam, Holland, Hilda van Stockum grew up in Ireland. She wrote and illustrated her first book at age 5, giving it to her younger brother Willem. She attended art school in Dublin, Amsterdam, and Washington, DC. Her first book for children, A Day on Skates: the Story of a Dutch Picnic, was published by May Massee at Viking and received a Newbery Honor in 1935.

She often wrote and illustrated chapter books about her childhood and her own five children. In The Cottage at Bantry Bay, she populates her story with memories and experience of her childhood in Ireland. In the five-book The Mitchells series, the family is based on her children and their lives in Washington, DC, and Canada. In the 1960s, she reached back to World War II for two books set among the Dutch Resistance movement, The Winged Watchman and The Borrowed House.

A much-admired illustrator and painter, Ms. van Stockum had several gallery exhibits and one of her still life paintings was chosen for a postage stamp in Ireland.

Ms. van Stockum died in November 2006 at the age of 98, having contributed a great deal to the world and to the field of children's literature.

Read more about Hilda van Stockum ...

—Vicki Palmquist

Jules Verne wrote more than 80 books, predicted much of our modern world, and is credited as being the Father of Science Fiction. Born on February 8, 1828, in Nantes, France, Jules Verne wanted nothing more than to be a writer. His father had other ideas. He gave Jules an allowance to study law in Paris, but withdrew the funds when he discovered Jules was writing instead. Cold, living on his own meager funds, Jules spent a great deal of time in the free library where it was warm. There he read books of science and technology, and wrote his first articles for children's magazines.

The first book he wrote was Five Weeks in a Balloon. It was rejected unanimously as being too scientific and not exciting. One children's book publisher decided to work with Jules, helping him revise the book until it had a good pace and compelling story line.

Alexandre Dumas the younger was his best friend.

Verne was shot by his nephew some years before his death; he never recovered from the wound. He died in 1905, much to the dismay of legions of fans the world over.

—Vicki Palmquist

Anne Rockwell celebrates her birthday on February 8th. She was born in Memphis, Tennessee and exhibited an interest in drawing and painting early in life. She studied art at the Sculpture Center in New York and Pratt Institute.

She first worked in the production department at Silver Burdett and then for an advertising firm. Anne started her illustration career with husband, Harlow Rockwell, and they went on to create 26 books together. Rockwell has, herself, written and illustrated 75 more, including picture books, information books for middle grade readers, folktales and folktale collections. Her most significant contribution has been in her information books for preschoolers, which exhibit her characteristic simple text and vibrant, clear illustrations.

Anne lives and works in Greenwich, Connecticut.

—Karen Ritz

Adrienne Adams, born on February 8th, 1906, was a dedicated illustrator, rising at 5 am to paint before she went off to her job as a teacher. Even when she became a full time illustrator in 1952, she still kept up that early morning schedule.

Titles such as Caldecott runner-up Houses from the Sun (1962), The Day We Saw the Sun Come Up (1962), and A Woggle of Witches (1971) are only a few of the 30 plus books to her credit. She painted in full color using tempera, gouache, watercolor, or crayon.

Ms. Adams passed away on December 3, 2002.

—Heidi Grosch

Dickens was one of the most popular and great literary geniuses of all time. Author, Ralph Waldo Emerson, after attending one of Dickens's public readings remarked, “he has too much talent for his genius; it is a fearful locomotive to which he is bound and can never be free from it nor set to rest. . . . He daunts me! I have not the key.”

Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, to John and Elizabeth Dickens. Charles was only twelve years old when his father was thrown into debtor’s prison. Charles was forced to work at a blackening factory which caused emotional scarring. In his works, David Copperfield and Great Expectations, the themes of alienation and betrayal stem from his painful childhood.

A few years later, Charles became a day student at a school in London. At age fifteen, he was hired as an attorney's office boy. In 1833, Charles took the pen name, Boz and worked as a free-lance reporter, while studying shorthand at night.

People marveled at the amount of writing Charles put out year after year. Between 1836 and 1844, while doing public readings around the world, Charles wrote the first series of Sketches by Boz, and ten additional titles.

In 1836, Charles married Catherine Hogarth. Together they had ten children. Charles was charming and brilliant but the couple later separated possibly due to his being emotionally insecure.

In 1869, Charles suffered his first stroke, forcing his public readings to be cancelled shortly, there after he began working on The Mystery of Edwin Drood. He suffered another stroke on June 8, 1870, and he died the next day. On June 14, 1870, Charles was buried at Westminster Abbey, and the last episode of the unfinished Mystery of Edwin Drood appeared in September.

Some of Charles Dickens other works include: The Cricket and the Hearth, The Haunted Man, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Little Dorrit, and his final work, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

—Terri DeGezelle

Native American illustrator, Shonto Begay, who was born on February 7th, is the fifth child of eleven born to a Navajo medicine man and his wife. He was raised in Arizona.

From an early age Begay was encouraged to take note of the world around him, to think of his own particular world as, in his words, "a circular line on the horizon." Drawing was always a part of him and after attending federal boarding schools for elementary school and high school, he enrolled in the Institute of American Indian Art in New Mexico. With and Associate degree in hand he moved to California to finish a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. In 1993 he received the Best Arizona Artist award.

Though better known as an artist of paintings, he has also illustrated children's books, most notably The Mud Pony which was chosen as a Reading Rainbow Selection and Ma'ii and Cousin Horned Toad, which he wrote and illustrated. His most recent book is Alice Yazzie's Year.

—Leslie Greaves Radloff

In a speech given October 1937, Laura Ingalls Wilder, who was born on February 7, 1867, reflected on her now famous Little House books. "Many years ago—there was no radio to amuse us, no moving pictures to go see, so when the day's work was done, we sat in the twilight or by the evening lamp and listened to Pa's stories and the music of his violin." Years later, in her sixties, Laura Ingalls Wilder started to write these stories down—these and the stories of her own childhood.

Even today her books stand out as accurate pictures of life on the prairie. "I wanted the children now to understand more about the beginning of things, to know what is behind the things they see—what it is that made America as they know it."

She originally intended the stories to be one volume called Pioneer Girl but her own daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, an author in her own right, encouraged her mother to write a series. In fact, we now know that the two collaborated and it was Rose who did much of the writing and editing of these tales.

"The real things in life haven't changed," Laura wrote. "It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures and to be cheerful and have courage when things go wrong."

She died on Febuary 10, 1957.

Two of her poems (written as a child):

Far over plains and mountains
We traveled once together
And were good friends in every place
In any kind of weather.
Now as you travel life's highway,
This is my thought today,
I wish you a pleasant journey
And good friends all the way.

We remember not the summer
For it was long ago
We remember not the summer
In this whirling blinding snow
I will leave this frozen region
I will travel further south
If you say one word against it
I will hit you in the mouth.

—Heidi Grosch

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