Featured Author

Born December 29, 1892 in Chicago, Illinois
Died August 21, 1948 in Downey, Wisconsin

This is an unfortunately short author's essay but a testament to the fact that great books can be produced under the most unexpected and difficult of circumstances. Richard Tupper Atwater was born December 29th, 1892 in Chicago Illinois. He attended the University of Chicago and graduated in 1910 with a B.A. in Greek. He stayed another seven years as a graduate student and teacher in Greek studies.

In addition to teaching at the University, he worked with the university's drama club in a variety of ways including writing a play for them. He was also an occasional contributing columnist for the Chicago Tribune. During this time at the University of Chicago he met his future wife in one of the classes he taught.

In 1917 he left the University and, after a stint in the Army at the end of World War I, he joined the Chicago Evening Post writing a column as "Riq." His first book, Rickety Rimes of Riq in 1925, was a collection of verse from this column. He moved to the Chicago Daily News, still publishing his Riq column. His first foray into children's books was Doris and the Trolls in 1931, but which did not leave a lasting impression on the reading public. He also translated the Secret History of Procopius which was published in 1927 as well as an operetta, The King's Sneezes, 1933. By this point he had authored four books, each in an entirely different genre; journalism, juvenile literature, translation of classics, and operetta.

It was in this period that the Atwater family took in a documentary film about the Byrd Antarctic expedition. This film left an impression on Atwater and when one of his two daughters complained about how many history books she was having to read, he set out to write a fantasy tale about penguins as a counterpoint. He completed the manuscript and it was much enjoyed by his daughters but he set it aside, not happy with it in its final form.

Tragically, Atwater suffered a stroke in 1934 and, though he survived till 1948, he never recovered sufficiently to write again. His wife, Florence Atwater, was faced with supporting an invalided husband two young daughters in the midst of the Great Depression. Evidently she had talent, intelligence and huge amounts of resolve.

She wrote a number of articles for the New Yorker and The Atlantic. She returned to university to obtain her MA in French as well as obtaining Chicago teaching certificates in English, French and Latin. Casting around for ways to make additional income she went back to Atwater's original manuscript and took it to a couple of publishers, both of whom rejected it.

Florence Atwater reviewed the script and decided to recast the story which, in its original version, was a complete fantasy. Keeping the middle of the book as her husband had written it, she rewrote the beginning and the end, counterbalancing the fantasy with a story line that accentuated the practical consequences attendant to a fantasy. This revised version, illustrated by the terrific Robert Lawson of The Story of Ferdinand fame (See Featured Author of September 16th, 2007), received a much more positive reception from publishers and Mr. Popper's Penguins was published in 1938 to immediate acclaim. It won a 1939 Newberry Honor and has been in print ever since.

Mr. Popper is a Walter Mitty type figure. He is a house painter by trade and is good enough at what he does but is clumsy, untidy, and absent minded. What he really loves to do is to spend his time reading books of travel and exploration, particularly polar exploration.

In response to an admiring letter he has sent to the world famous polar explorer, Admiral Drake, Mr. Popper is surprised to receive a live penguin. Very shortly afterwards, he ends up with a second penguin and, consequently, soon after that a further ten little penguins. Slowly but with great dedication, Mr. Popper, supported by his resolute, practical wife, transforms his home into an arctic refuge for penguins. After many adventures, Mr. Popper ends up having to make the difficult decision that a house in the city is no place to raise penguins and he makes the commitment to turn them over to Admiral Drake who plans to take them to the North Pole, where, regrettably, there are not yet any penguins. This difficult decision is mitigated by Admiral Drake's surprise invitation to Mr. Popper to join the expedition.

There is no message to Mr. Popper's Penguins, but a lot of information and most importantly a lot of plot, humor and adventure. It is simply a wonderful, charming story produced from the unplanned efforts of three participants, Florence and Richard Atwater along with Robert Lawson in which the two writers undertake a most unusual collaboration. There is antic humor married to dead-pan practicality that in its juxtaposition makes the fantasy both more hilarious and more believable. For example, shortly after the arrival of the first penguin, christened Captain Cook, the Popper's family goldfish falls prey to Captain Cook's peckish appetite.

If your child has not yet read Mr. Popper's Penguins, give them a copy. If they are not yet an independent reader, it serves very well as a read-to book.

Independent Reader

Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard and FLorence Atwater and illustrated by Robert Lawson Highly Recommended

Born May 9th, 1906 in West Haven, Connecticut
Died July 15th, 1988 in Hamden, Connecticut

Eleanor Estes wrote eighteen children's books of which four received a Newberry Medal or Newberry Honor and 2/3rds of which are still in print more than sixty years later. Her stories are so firmly rooted in the timeless perspective of a child that they have aged hardly at all.

Born Eleanor Ruth Rosenfield, May 9th, 1906 in West Haven, Connecticut, Estes childhood was thoroughly grounded in an earlier, more rural, simpler time. Estes described growing up in West Haven in her autobiographical entry in The Junior Book of Authors:

The town of West Haven, Connecticut, where I was born, is in a hollow with hills behind it, the New Haven harbor and Long Island Sound lapping against two sides, and a small river meandering along its eastern margin. It was a perfect town to grow up in. It had everything a child could want, great vacant fields with daisies and buttercups, an occasional peaceful cow, and even a team of oxen with whose help cellars for new houses were dug.

There were marvelous trees to climb, woods where there were brooks, and springs, and wild flowers growing. There were swimming and building in the sand and fishing and clamming in the summertime, and ice and snow and sliding down hill in the wintertime, with rowboat exploration of the small river for eels and killies in the betweentime.

Despite the idyllic setting, Estes' childhood was not an easy one. One of four children, her father, a railroad accountant, passed away when she was thirteen years old leaving her mother, a dressmaker, to raise the family. The theme of straightened circumstances and everyone pitching in together, which shows up in many of her books, was a recounting of her own experiences.

Upon graduating high school in 1923, Estes joined the New Haven Library in the children's section and worked up the ranks there till becoming the Children's Section librarian in 1929. In 1931 Estes received a scholarship at the Pratt Institute Library School for a year of study. It was there that she met a fellow student Rice Estes, a South Carolinian and career librarian as well. Upon completing her studies, Eleanor Estes joined the New York Public Library where she stayed until resigning in 1940 to pursue writing full-time. In December, 1932 she married Rice Estes.

The Estes lived in the New York area until 1948, when her husband's career took them to southern California for four years. It was in California that her only child, daughter Helena, was born in 1948. They returned to the East Coast in 1952 and lived in Manhattan, Connecticut and Washington, D.C. as Rice Estes' career dictated, but always gravitating back to Connecticut where they ultimately settled.

All of Estes books are worth reading but she is noted for three key sets of stories; The Moffats series (The Moffats, The Middle Moffat, Rufus M., and very belatedly in her writing career, The Moffat Museum), the Pye series (Ginger Pye and Pinky Pye) and a stand-alone morality tale, The Hundred Dresses. The Middle Moffat, Rufus M., and The Hundred Dresses each won a Newberry Honor award and Estes received the Newberry Medal for Ginger Pye.

The Moffats series is based on a family of four in the fictional town of Cranberry, Connecticut (based on West Haven) in the 1910's. The series has the easy small town feel of Robert McCloskey's Centerburg Tales, the child centricity of The Railway Children, and an antic situational humor all its own. Each book is a series of adventures, chapter by chapter, each reasonably self-contained and without significant sustained plot development over the course of the book. This makes the series ideal bedtime or naptime reading, your child going off to sleep with a smile on their face.

Ginger Pye and Pinky Pye are similarly family centric, but in this series, the action revolves around the family's two pets, in the first instance the dog, Ginger, and in the second, the cat, Pinky. Estes based these stories on actual events with her own childhood pets.

The Hundred Dresses is a really intriguing story that continues to fascinate children (and adults) today. The core story is told primarily from the perspective of Maddie about an outsider, Wanda Petronski who is teased to the point of leaving school. The Hundred Dresses is a descendant of the morality plays and leaves both children and adults thinking deep thoughts and reflecting on their own behavior. And when I say a morality play, I mean that in the old sense of the term and as a compliment. It is a story that first entertains, and then, only indirectly, instructs. Today we have an avalanche of books that are intended to instruct but end up being a beat-you-over-the-head message book with hardly any entertainment. Lots are written, many are purchased, and most sit unsullied on the shelves. You can't help feeling, having read one of these stilted and dreadfully preachy tomes, that you are the victim of authorial moral posturing with little to redeem the book at all.

Such is not the case with Estes' The Hundred Dresses. Here you have a tale that gently leads children to reflect on how their actions impact others, consider how insidious unconscious prejudice can be and think about the magnanimity of the human spirit.

Wanda Petronski is a Polish immigrant living in the wrong part of town, speaking a slightly fractured form of English, wearing the same dress to school everyday and wanting to be liked by others, but not knowing how to fit in. Peggy is "the most popular girl in the school" and is wealthy and pretty. One day when, all the girls are admiring a friend's new dress, Wanda, trying to be part of the action, exclaims that she has one hundred dresses at home in her closet. This is her downfall. Led by Peggy, all the girls begin a sustained running joke at Wanda's expense about the hundred dresses at home.

Estes shows her mettle as an author by making it clear that Peggy is not a "bad" person per se. The game Peggy develops that so tortures Wanda, is, to her mind, really just a game. 'Peggy was not really cruel. She protected small children from bullies. And she cried for hours if she saw an animal mistreated. If anybody had said to her, "Don't you think that is a cruel way to treat Wanda?" she would have been very surprised.'

This subtlety is in contrast to so many of the message books today where the author is very explicit, Person/Group X - Good, Person/Group Y - Bad: X - Victim, Y - Oppressor. Estes takes away the easy, and therefore, not real world of binary morality and instead develops a real world with which children and adults can engage. Actions and decisions are not necessarily clear or considered, things happen that we don't intend to happen, there are consequences we don't anticipate, there are wrongs we can't right. Sometimes all we can do is learn and go forward.

The tension in the tale arises from Maddie, Peggy's good friend. Maddie is not well off either, but better positioned than Wanda. Maddie is delighted to be Peggy's friend, but she is distressed to see how Peggy is treating Wanda. Distressed as she is, Maddie can't bring herself to criticize Peggy's actions for fear that she will jeopardize her own social standing and possibly even become the target of the teasing. Maddie realizes that she is, perhaps, in the worst position of all: she realizes something bad is happening but does nothing about it. Not only is her (in)action bad but the motivation for inaction is worse. She does nothing for fear of jeopardizing her standing. Her own considered judgment of her behavior is that "She had stood by silently, and that was just as bad as what Peggy had done. Worse. She was a coward."

One of the marvelous things about The Hundred Dresses is how complimentary Louis Slobodkin's illustrations are to Estes' text. Early in the story, there is a powerful demonstration of this. Estes' writes "And the girls laughed derisively, while Wanda moved over to the sunny place by the ivy-covered brick wall of the school building where she usually stood and waited for the bell to ring." On that page is a suffused picture in black ink and pink wash of a little girl in just such a position who is the very picture of wrenching isolation and loneliness. For children, whose senses are so much less calloused than those of adults, those words with that picture can be extremely moving, picture and text amplifying each other.

Wanda moves away, but her parting gift to the class of tormentors is the collection of one hundred pictures of dresses that she had drawn, with two in particular marked out for Peggy and Maddie. There is more to it than that, but this is a story of remarkable layers, meaningful and moving at each layer. Bullying, mean-girl behavior, prejudice - this is a story that makes children consider the consequences of their behavior but without all the posturing, moralizing and victimhood that so often abound.

Estes' writing style is noted for being very strong on character and description but rather inattentive to plot development. This is not entirely a bad thing. Her well rendered characters grip the imagination of children as do the wonderful descriptions of things and events. The fact that the plots are not overly complex and developed, make it much easier to follow along in a read-aloud bed-time story. Estes demonstrated through all her books an uncharacteristically strong ability to adopt the perspective and world view of a child and this is the source of much of their humor as the children clear-sightedly and with unerring logic grasp the wrong end of the situational stick every time. The Moffat and Pye books are great books for making children laugh, at the protagonists and themselves as they see the children doing that which they themselves have so often done before with inauspicious outcomes. These stories create a model for tight and supportive families and children being children and are always told in a fashion such that there is a positive resolution without any saccharine.

Eleanor Estes passed away in her home state of Connecticut, July 15th, 1988.

Independent Reader

The Moffats by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Louis Slobodkin Highly Recommended

The Middle Moffat by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Louis Slobodkin Highly Recommended

Rufus M. by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Louis Slobodkin Highly Recommended

The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Louis Slobodkin Highly Recommended

Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Eleanor Estes Highly Recommended

Pinky Pye by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Edward Ardizzone Highly Recommended

The Witch Family by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Edward Ardizzone Suggested

The Alley by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Edward Ardizzone Suggested

Miranda The Great by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Edward Ardizzone Suggested

The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode by Eleanor Estes and illustratde by Edward Ardizzone Suggested

The Moffat Museum by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Louis Slobodkin Suggested

The Curious Adventures Of Jimmy Mcgee by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by John O'Brien Suggested

Eleanor Estes Bibliography

The Moffats by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Louis Slobodkin 1941
The Middle Moffat by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Louis Slobodkin 1942
Rufus M. by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Louis Slobodkin 1943
The Sun and the Wind and Mr. Todd by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Louis Slobodkin 1943
The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Louis Slobodkin 1944
The Echoing Green by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by NA 1947
The Sleeping Giant and Other Stories by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Eleanor Estes 1948
Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Eleanor Estes 1951
A Little Oven by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Eleanor Estes 1955
Pinky Pye by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Edward Ardizzone 1958
The Witch Family by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Edward Ardizzone 1960
Small but Wiry by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Louis Slobodkin 1963
The Alley by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Edward Ardizzone 1964
Miranda the Great by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Edward Ardizzone 1967
The Lollipop Princess: A Play for Paper Dolls by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Eleanor Estes 1967
The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Edward Ardizzone 1972
The Coat-Hanger Christmas Tree by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Susanne Suba 1973
The Lost Umbrella of Kim Chu by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by acqueline Ayer 1978
The Moffat Museum by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Eleanor Estes 1983
The Curious Adventures of Jimmy McGee by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by John O'Brien 1987

Born August 2, 1900 in Holling Corners, Michigan
Died September 7, 1973 in Pasadena, California

Few children's writers are acknowledged to transform or even initiate a genre within children's literature. They may make contributions of a great book here or there, or they may add a refinement or two. Holling C. Holling initiated, almost out of the blue, a whole new genre of children's books - stories wedded to and built from a factual foundation in which a fictional story outline provided the impetus to carry a child along while infusing a surprising volume of factual knowledge along the way.

Holling is a bit of a cipher. His declared life story is out there and easily obtained, but the few facts proffered hint at there being more than is said. For someone that made a major contribution to children's books, founded a new style of writing and whose principle books remain in print sixty years later, surprisingly little has been written about Holling. There is no biography that I can locate.

Children's books often give us the lie of our current perceptions of the past. There are many topical issues that we think of as relatively modern: women's rights, conservation, ecology, civil rights, etc. It is striking to me how frequently it is that I will be reading some children's books from fifty or a hundred years ago and right there, you will find a focus on these issues.

Holling is an example of this observation. Two decades before Rachel Carson's Silent Spring captured people's attention, Holling was educating children about the interconnectedness of life and the life cycle of animals and ecosystems (Minn of the Mississippi and Pagoo ). Forty years before Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Holling was presenting Native Americans in respectful and positive ways (The Book of Indians, Claws of the Thunderbird, and - to some degree - Paddle-to-the-Sea).

Holling's life story is easily told. He was born into a well-established pioneering family, in Holling Corners, Jackson County, Michigan on August 2, 1900. His father was superintendent of schools and so their house was well stocked with books, supplemented by those his mother brought from the library in the nearby town. In addition to loving to read, Holling was very much an outdoor child with a great love of camping, animals, Native American history, etc.

Holling early displayed a talent for art and illustration and on graduating high school in 1917, he enrolled in the Art Institute of Chicago, graduating in 1923. He met his future wife and collaborator, Lucille Webster Holling at the Art Institute, later marrying in 1925. It was also while attending the Art Institute that Holling spent a year in New Mexico studying art. This year gave him a much sharper appreciation of the use of color in illustration (he had mostly been accustomed to working in black and white). It also fueled his love and fascination of Native American life and culture. In fact, his first two books, New Mexico Made Easy and Sun and Smoke: Verse and Woodcuts of New Mexico, were both published in 1923 the same year he graduated from the Art Institute.

After graduating, Holling cast about a bit before settling into his chosen career. Initially, he worked as a taxidermist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago until 1926 and then spent a year as an art instructor on New York University's University World Cruise. In 1927 Holling and his wife returned to Chicago and Holling tried his hand at advertising for a brief period. From 1927 on, though, Holling concentrated on his art work and writing for children. Over the next fifteen years he wrote and illustrated a dozen books for children.

None of the books from this period in his writing career are still in print; however, three of the titles though received particular notice at the time. Claws of the Thunderbird: A Tale of Three Lost Indians (1928) is the tale of two young Native Americans caught up in a conflict between two great tribes, the Sioux and the Chippewa. What is marked is that these are not presented as cardboard caricatures but rather as an adventure/drama in which the protagonists happen to be Native American. This capability of marrying a factual education of Native American culture and history to a compelling storyline was a foreshadowing of Hollings future characteristic style of writing.

The other two books which put Holling onto the popular radar screen were a paired set of mass-market titles, The Book of Indians (1935) and The Book of Cowboys (1936). Both are notable for the historical and cultural veracity.

But all this was somewhat run-of-the-mill success preceding a startling run of five books over fifteen years starting in 1941 with Paddle-to-the-Sea (1942 Caldecott Honor) and including Tree in the Trail, Seabird, Minn of the Mississippi (1952 Newberry Honor), and Pagoo. All of these books are still in print, all were popular at the time and all remain popular among young children and independent readers today. In particular, these five have carved out a devoted following among home-schoolers for reasons to be described shortly.

Holling's books were different than those that came before him. There were certainly authors writing for children about animals and environments and science in the 1910's, 1920's and 1930's. But they were writing in a different fashion. Thornton Burgess was a very prolific author, many of whose books remain popular today. From the 1910's through to 1960 he wrote more than one hundred books for children all featuring a deep love of nature and animals. The majority of his books consisted of stories featuring anthropomorphized animal protagonists in natural settings, though he did also write reference type books for juvenile readers. There is clearly a love of nature throughout his work and deep knowledge about animals and the environment. While there is knowledge to be gleaned from his books, it does take something of a back seat to the story.

Similarly with Roy Chapman Andrews, a scientist with the American Museum of Natural History who wrote a number of books, many autobiographical, about nature and his adventures as an explorer, paleontologist, and marine biologist. These were and still are great reading but the focus is on the man's adventures and the knowledge gained is at a pretty general level.

Holling created a whole new approach. Each of his books was the product of two to four years of field and library research. Each book shares a somewhat similar structure, style and presentation, each of which were unique at the time of their writing and have rarely been well-emulated since then.

Each story is rooted in the natural world, set on the sea, rivers, the coast, and inland trails. Each story involves a physical and temporal journey. In Minn of the Mississippi, Minn (a turtle) travels over many seasons and years from Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico. Paddle-to-the-Sea is the story of the journey of a wooden carving made by a Native American boy from its launching place in the headwaters of the St. Lawrence River, ultimately all the way to France. Tree in the Trail twists this sequence just a bit. Initially it is the story of the passing of history as seen by a stationary cottonwood tree located on what eventually becomes the Santa Fe Trail. But even here, there is travel as the wood from the tree is eventually made into an ox yoke and makes the journey to the end of the trail.

The visual structure of the books was characterized by a large format. Typically a page of text faces a full page color illustration. On the text page, the text is centered and usually surrounded by drawings, sketches, maps, and additional hand lettered information pertinent to the main story. Lucille Webster Holling is known to have contributed to each of these books and it appears that these embellishments were substantially hers.

This unusual structure is, I think, part of the appeal to young children. As you lie close together reading the story to a child (and these are primarily read-to stories), their eyes can roam the detailed pictures and pick out extra information from the fringes while still listening. Many children's books have now taken this to an extreme where the text looks like it has been the victim of a shotgun blast of extra information with pictures, photos, sidebars, etc., etc. Some take to it but I think most children and adults find it distracting. Holling makes it work by keeping it simple and by keeping the embellishing art work consistent with the main paintings.

The final distinctive aspect of this sequence of books is that Holling does a marvelous job of melding a narrative/fictional story line to a lot of factual information in such a way that it is seamless. The information is a part of the story - not something duct-taped on. And it is not just a few nuggets of information here and there; it is a lot of information. Read Minn of the Mississippi and by the end of the story you will have a very solid knowledge of geography and topography of the heartland of America as well as an understanding of its ecosystems and of the life cycle of a turtle all from an adventure book. This style is characteristic of Pagoo and of Paddle-to-the-Sea as well. With Seabird (1949 Newberry Honor) and Tree in the Trail, you can add a solid dose of history to the mix. It is for these reasons - art, story-telling, seamless and comprehensive information - that these books are so popular among home-schoolers. That and, of course, because children love them.

Holling passed away September 7, 1973 in Pasadena, California where he had made his home the latter half of his life.

Picture Books

Minn of the Mississippi by Holling C. Holling Recommended

Paddle to the Sea by Holling C. Holling Highly Recommended

Pagoo by Holling C. Holling and Lucille Webster Holling Suggested

Seabird by Holling C. Holling Recommended

Tree in the Trail by Holling Clancy Holling Suggested

Holling C. Holling Bibliography

New Mexico Made Easy by Holling C. Holling and illustrated by Holling C. Holling 1923
Sun and Smoke: Verse and Woodcuts of New Mexico by Holling C. Holling and illustrated by Holling C. Holling 1923
Little Big-Bye-and-Bye by Holling C. Holling and illustrated by Holling C. Holling 1926
Roll Away Twins by Holling C. Holling and illustrated by Holling C. Holling 1927
Rum-Tum-Tummy by Holling C. Holling 1927
Claws of the Thunderbird: A Tale of Three Lost Indians by Holling C. Holling and illustrated by Holling C. Holling 1928
Choo-Me-Shoo the Eskimo by Holling C. Holling and illustrated by Holling C. Holling 1928
Rocky Billy: The Story of the Bounding Career of a Rocky Mountain Goat by Holling C. Holling and illustrated by Holling C. Holling 1928
Blot by Phyllis Crawford and illustrated by Holling C. Holling 1930
The Twins Who Flew around the World by Holling C. Holling and illustrated by Holling C. Holling 1931
Little Folks of Other Lands by Watty Piper and illustrated by Holling C. Holling 1932
Road in Storyland by Watty Piper and illustrated by Holling C. Holling 1932
The Book of Indians by Holling C. Holling and illustrated by Holling C. Holling 1935
The Book of Cowboys by Holling C. Holling and illustrated by Holling C. Holling 1936
Little Buffalo Boy by Holling C. Holling and illustrated by Holling C. Holling 1939
Paddle-to-the-Sea by Holling C. Holling and illustrated by Holling C. Holling 1941
Tree in the Trail by Holling C. Holling and illustrated by Holling C. Holling 1942
Children of Other Lands by Watty Piper and illustrated by Holling C. Holling 1943
Seabird by Holling C. Holling and illustrated by Holling C. Holling 1948
Minn of the Mississippi by Holling C. Holling and illustrated by Holling C. Holling 1951
Pagoo by Holling C. Holling and illustrated by Holling C. Holling 1957
The Magic Story Tree: A Favorite Collection of Fifteen Fairy Tales and Fables by Holling C. Holling and illustrated by Holling C. Holling 1964