Tuesday Kidlit Trivia for May 17, 2022--This Connecticut author/illustrator is a lifelong animal lover, and his art reflects the rambunctious humor of childhood. His picture books from 1979, 1981 and 1982 featured an energetic Great Dane named Pinkerton, and later books retold classic tales. This is Steven Kellogg.
Born in Racine, WI in 1960, this author/illustrator was part of a family with five kids who went to the library every week. He wrote his first picture book in high school. His characters were mostly mice, with names like Owen, Lilly, Sheila Rae and Chrysanthemum, but he won a Caldecott for his book about a kitten. This is Kevin Henkes, and his Caldecott winner is Kitten's First Full Moon.
In 1924, when she was 18, she left her family in Australia and moved to England. She worked as a dressmaker, actor, dancer and writer. She said she didn't create her most famous character, but rather the character entered her consciousness and demanded her story be told. The author is P.L. (Pamela Lyndon) Travers, and her bossy subject is Mary Poppins. Her first Mary Poppins book was published in 1934.
This British writer was a sickly child, often confined to his nursery, where he imagined swashbuckling tales of pirates and treasure. Many of his poems in A Child's Garden of Verses, 1885, have become classics. This is Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island and Kidnapped, and poems such as "I have a little shadow who goes in and out with me, and what can be the use of him is more than I can see," and "How do you like to go up in a swing, up in the air so blue? Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing ever a child can do."
For years, this author had the idea for a story about a friend of her mother's. When her mother developed Alzheimer's, the author decided it was time to preserve a memory for her mom and write the book about a mail-order bride and two children. The 1985 book won the Newbery Medal and is sometimes called the great American children's novel of the '80's. The writer died this week at the age of 84. The author is Patricia MacLachlan, and her book is Sarah, Plain and Tall.
