Tuesday Kidlit Trivia for June 24, 2024

Tuesday Kidlit Trivia for June 24, 2024 This high school drop out wrote one of the most popular early readers ever, but he began his career as a cartoonist with two comic strips, "Tuffy" and "Laugh It Off." When his young daughter needed therapy for a bad hip. he made her a series of drawings of a boy and a dinosaur to take her mind off her treatment. These were the basis for his 1958 early reader, Danny and the Dinosaur, and many credit this book for sparking kids' interest in dinosaurs. His simple drawings complimented the simple text perfectly, and he went on to create other books for kids learning to read, such as Sammy, the Seal, Julius, and Chester, about a carousel horse. This is Syd Hoff, who was born in New York in 1912, and died in Miami at the age of 91.

Tuesday Kidlit Trivia for June 11, 2024

 This American author, born in 1970, is best known by his pen name. He is also a screenwriter, tv producer, and musician who has played accordian with several bands. His first book for children was rejected several times as being too dark, but he found great success with his series of 13 books, Victorian Gothic in tone, about orphaned siblingsViolet, Klaus and Sunny and the evil Count Olaf, intent on stealing their inheritence. The books have led to a tv series, a movie, and a video game. This is Daniel Handler, better known as Lemony Snicket.

Tuesday Kidlit Trivia for June 4, 2024

 When this author was a child, his mother died and his father disappeared, and he moved from Edinbugh to his grandparents' home in the Berkshire countryside of England, where he fell in love with the creatures there, a rat, a mole, a badger and a toad. As an adult he followed neo-paganism, preferring nature to organized religion. His marriage was unhappy, but his son inspired him to make up stories which led to one of the best loved read-aloud books in the English language. The book is Wind in the Willows, and the author is Kenneth Grahame, 1859-1932.

Tuesday Kidlit Trivia for May 28, 2024

 The 1950's TV show Lassie derived from the 1943 movie (which starred Roddy McDowell and Elizabeth Taylor), which came from the 1940 book Lassie-Come-Home, which began as a story in the Saturday Evening Post in 1938, which was inspired by a short story from 1859 of collie named Lassie who guided adults to two brothers lost in the snow. Another story tells of a collie named Lassie in World War I, who licked the face of a soldier thought to be dead and kept him warm until he stirred and eventually fully recovered. The book Lassie-Come-Home was written by Eric Knight.

Tuesday Kidlit Trivia for May 21, 2024

  This contemporary author/illustrator lives in the country in upstate New York. Her grandfather was a cowboy out west, but she grew up in Queens and attended Cooper Union Art College. On her website she says that while she loves writing stories, "drawing pictures is like dessert." Several of her best-loved books feature a big white bear and his goose friend, but she also has books about pigs and even one that stars a time-travelling trio--an aardvark, an anteater, and an armadillo. I was honored to meet her at a Highlights writing conference in Honesdale, PA where she took me shopping at the Goodwill. This is the wonderful Susanne Bloom, "A Splendid Friend Indeed."

Tuesday Kidlit Trivia for May 7, 2024

 This author lives in Massachusetts and has over 400 published books. In the past she has competed in Madness Poetry, where 64 poets are paired up, each pair is given a word to write about, they submit their poems, and the public votes. One continues, one is out, so the field goes from 64 to 32, to 16, etc. This year I'm one of the 64! Please go to the site so you can vote--the poems are fun. The author from my home state of Massachusetts is Jane Yolen, and the word for my first poem is sangfroid. Aaagh! Voting starts May 7, Tuesday.

Tuesday Kidlit Trivia for April 23, 2024

 This English author/illustrator born in 1886 attended MIT and settled in New York, but in World War I he joined the British army. While serving in Flanders and France, he wrote stories to send back to his children in the US about a kindly veterinarian who could communicate with animals. An author friend convinced him to turn the stories into a book, which became a popular series. As times changed, some of his illustrations and descriptions of Black people were seen to be racist, and later editions were rewritten to eliminate the offending material. His series of books has been made into several movies. This is Hugh Lofting and his series chroinicles the adventures of Dr. Doolittle.