From: Kathleen Horning <horning>
Date: Thu, 01 Apr 1999 13:51:47 -0600

As Ginny Moore Kruse announced this morning, in April we will be discussing autobiographies and memoirs written by children's authors and illustrators.

Over the past decade or so there has been a lot of this sort of autobiographical writing for children and teens, most often geared toward the age level of the audience for whom the author typically writes. James Stevenson, for example, has written a delightful series of autobiographical picture books, beginning with "When I Was Nine" (Greenwillow, 1986), for his young readers and M.E. Kerr addressed her teen readers way back in 1983 when she published "Me Me Me Me Me: Not a Novel"
(Zolotow/Harper). These two books were among the first of their kind.

These days we see a fairly steady stream of autobiographical art and writing by children's book creators. There are many, many to choose from, but we're going to open this discussion by focussing on three that were published in 1998: 1) "Looking Back" by Lois Lowry (Houghton Mifflin); "No Pretty Pictures" by Anita Lobel
(Greenwillow); and 3) "Knots in My Yo-Yo String: The Autobiography of a Kid" by Jerry Spinelli (Knopf).

Each of these three authors were children in the 1940s, but their stories are vastly different due to place, heritage and circumstance, and to the style each one has chosen to tell his or her story to children. To start our discussion, we invite comments from those of you who have read any of these three outstanding autobiographies.

Kathleen T. Horning (horning at facstaff.wisc.edu) Cooperative Children's Book Center University of Wisconsin-School of Education 4290 Helen C. White Hall 600 North Park St. Madison, WI 53706 608&3930 FAX: 608&2I33
Received on Thu 01 Apr 1999 01:51:47 PM CST