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From: Connie Rockman <connie.rock>
Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 10:00:58 -0400
When I edited the Eighth Book of Junior Authors and Illustrators, published in 2000 by H. W. Wilson, it included a revised entry on Clyde Robert Bulla. He sent me an autobiographical sketch that tells a more complete, and very touching, story of how he came to write children's books. I found this a fascinating piece of children's book history and attach it for those who might be interested.
Connie Rockman Children's Literature Consultant Editor, Eighth and Ninth Book of Junior Authors and Illustrators (H. W. Wilson)
Clyde Robert Bulla (Eighth Book of Junior Authors and Illustrators, H. W. Wilson, ?2000)
I was born on a farm near the little town of King City, Missouri. I learned to read and write in a one-room country school. As soon as I discovered words and what they meant and what they could be made to mean, my path was set. I was going to be a writer.
Long before I should have, I started sending my stories to magazines. For years my life was writing, mailing out manuscripts, getting them back with rejection slips. But when I was 20, the tide turned. I made my first sale. More sales followed. In those Depression years, the checks were welcome. But I was realizing that while I knew I wanted to be a writer, I didn?t know what kind of writer I wanted to be. I wasn?t happy with my magazine stories. I switched to novels and wrote three or four. Only one was published, and that was a failure.
I began to look for work that would support me while I learned to be a writer. I moved to my home town and went to work on the weekly newspaper. Mostly I ran the linotype and helped the printer. Much later I wrote a column called ?People and Places.?
My best friend was a teacher in Louisiana with the romantic name of Emma Celeste Thibodaux. We hadn?t met -- we never met -- but she had read some of my published work and written to me. She had written stories for children. She thought this was something I might do.
I didn?t want to write for children. I didn?t know how. The children?s books I had read hadn?t appealed to me. I told her I had no ideas. She gave me one. It didn?t appeal to me either, but because she was my best friend and I didn?t want to disappoint her, I wrote a book, The Donkey Cart, based on her idea. She urged me to send it out. I sent it to my agent, who promptly sent it back.
Years passed. Em?Celeste met a famous author and illustrator of children?s books who was doing research in Louisiana. Her name was Lois Lenski. ?If only you could get to know her!? wrote Em?Celeste. ?Why don?t you write to her?? For the first time I was a little impatient with my friend. What was I to this famous author-illustrator?
And one day a letter came from Lois Lenski! ?Em?Celeste has been sending me your newspaper columns. Judging from these, I think you might be able to write for children. She tells me you have written a children?s book. Could I see it?? I sent her The Donkey Cart. She showed it to Elizabeth Riley, juvenile editor of the Thomas Y. Crowell Company. After I had completely rewritten it and thrown out a couple of chapters, it was accepted.
The book came out in style, with illustrations by Lois Lenski. I liked it -- all but the story. Who was going to read about the mild adventures of a mild boy and girl? I was amazed when Elizabeth Riley asked me for another book.
I had grown up in the neighborhood of St. Joseph, Missouri, where the Pony Express started in 1860. I thought young readers might be interested in a story about the men who had carried mail across the West on horseback. I began to see it as an exciting story, with plot and character. I would keep it simple and clear. It might be different from any other children?s book!
Riding the Pony Express was published, and again I was disappointed. It fell short of my hopes and expectations. I began to learn that no book would ever be the wonderful work I planned. But I had found the kind of writing I wanted to do -- the kind I was meant to do. Now, more than fifty years and seventy-odd books later, I am as sure of this as ever.
Born January 9, 1914, on a farm near King City, Missouri, Clyde Robert Bulla was the son of Julian and Sara Bulla and had two older sisters and a brother. He describes himself as being largely self-educated with a special passion for opera, music, painting, history and traveling. In his autobiography, A Grain of Wheat , Bulla tells of his determination to become a writer, a storyteller. Though his family didn?t encourage his hopes, he knew at a young age that writing was what he wanted to do and persevered, as many of his characters do in their own adventures.
Bulla has said that he never forgot how difficult reading was for some of his classmates. He has tried to make his own books easy to read but complex enough in content to interest older children as well as younger ones. Known for his capacity to write close-knit, strong, fast-moving plots and for using simple, direct language that conveys an innate understanding of children?s feelings and needs, Bulla has made a special impact on middle-grade readers over the years.
Bulla researches thoroughly before writing his historical novels. A Lion to Guard Us provides a vivid picture of the hardships endured by early settlers, as the three Freebold children make a perilous voyage across the Atlantic to join their father in squalid, fever-ridden Jamestown. The boy in Charlie's House makes the same crossing about a hundred years later, though not by choice. Kidnapped off the streets of London, he is sold as an indentured servant in America, where he has so few rights that his master can use him as a stake in a card game. But Charlie is determined to have a life of his own; he escapes and eventually prospers. Bulla's contemporary stories include Shoeshine Girl, the story of a tough ten-year-old who apprentices herself to an elderly shoeshine man and learns to value more than money, and The Chalk Box Kid, in which a boy's talent for drawing helps him cope with sudden changes after his father loses his job.
As well as being a prolific writer of children?s fiction, Bulla has written nonfiction and composed music for children?s song books and plays. A talented amateur painter and a better-than-amateur musician, he has composed songs for his own books and has also set Lois Lenski's poems to music. His accounts of opera plots (in three books, plus a fourth on Gilbert and Sullivan) are clear and concise. Los Angeles has been his home for many years and he has been an active member of the Author?s Guild and the Society of Children?s Book Writers and Illustrators.
Winner of the George G. Stone Center for Children?s Books Award in 1968, Squanto, Friend of the White Man received a Boy?s Club of America Gold Medal in 1955. Benito was cited as an outstanding juvenile book by the Author?s Club of Los Angeles and in 1971 Bulla received a Christopher Award for Pocahontas and the Strangers. Shoeshine Girl garnered many awards including a 1976 Southern California Council on Children?s Literature Award, the Charlie May Simon Award, the Sequoyah Children?s Book Award and the South Carolina Children?s Book Award. A Lion to Guard Us was cited as a 1982 Notable Children?s Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies. The Chalk Box Kid was an ALA Notable Children?s Book.
Received on Tue 29 May 2007 09:00:58 AM CDT
Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 10:00:58 -0400
When I edited the Eighth Book of Junior Authors and Illustrators, published in 2000 by H. W. Wilson, it included a revised entry on Clyde Robert Bulla. He sent me an autobiographical sketch that tells a more complete, and very touching, story of how he came to write children's books. I found this a fascinating piece of children's book history and attach it for those who might be interested.
Connie Rockman Children's Literature Consultant Editor, Eighth and Ninth Book of Junior Authors and Illustrators (H. W. Wilson)
Clyde Robert Bulla (Eighth Book of Junior Authors and Illustrators, H. W. Wilson, ?2000)
I was born on a farm near the little town of King City, Missouri. I learned to read and write in a one-room country school. As soon as I discovered words and what they meant and what they could be made to mean, my path was set. I was going to be a writer.
Long before I should have, I started sending my stories to magazines. For years my life was writing, mailing out manuscripts, getting them back with rejection slips. But when I was 20, the tide turned. I made my first sale. More sales followed. In those Depression years, the checks were welcome. But I was realizing that while I knew I wanted to be a writer, I didn?t know what kind of writer I wanted to be. I wasn?t happy with my magazine stories. I switched to novels and wrote three or four. Only one was published, and that was a failure.
I began to look for work that would support me while I learned to be a writer. I moved to my home town and went to work on the weekly newspaper. Mostly I ran the linotype and helped the printer. Much later I wrote a column called ?People and Places.?
My best friend was a teacher in Louisiana with the romantic name of Emma Celeste Thibodaux. We hadn?t met -- we never met -- but she had read some of my published work and written to me. She had written stories for children. She thought this was something I might do.
I didn?t want to write for children. I didn?t know how. The children?s books I had read hadn?t appealed to me. I told her I had no ideas. She gave me one. It didn?t appeal to me either, but because she was my best friend and I didn?t want to disappoint her, I wrote a book, The Donkey Cart, based on her idea. She urged me to send it out. I sent it to my agent, who promptly sent it back.
Years passed. Em?Celeste met a famous author and illustrator of children?s books who was doing research in Louisiana. Her name was Lois Lenski. ?If only you could get to know her!? wrote Em?Celeste. ?Why don?t you write to her?? For the first time I was a little impatient with my friend. What was I to this famous author-illustrator?
And one day a letter came from Lois Lenski! ?Em?Celeste has been sending me your newspaper columns. Judging from these, I think you might be able to write for children. She tells me you have written a children?s book. Could I see it?? I sent her The Donkey Cart. She showed it to Elizabeth Riley, juvenile editor of the Thomas Y. Crowell Company. After I had completely rewritten it and thrown out a couple of chapters, it was accepted.
The book came out in style, with illustrations by Lois Lenski. I liked it -- all but the story. Who was going to read about the mild adventures of a mild boy and girl? I was amazed when Elizabeth Riley asked me for another book.
I had grown up in the neighborhood of St. Joseph, Missouri, where the Pony Express started in 1860. I thought young readers might be interested in a story about the men who had carried mail across the West on horseback. I began to see it as an exciting story, with plot and character. I would keep it simple and clear. It might be different from any other children?s book!
Riding the Pony Express was published, and again I was disappointed. It fell short of my hopes and expectations. I began to learn that no book would ever be the wonderful work I planned. But I had found the kind of writing I wanted to do -- the kind I was meant to do. Now, more than fifty years and seventy-odd books later, I am as sure of this as ever.
Born January 9, 1914, on a farm near King City, Missouri, Clyde Robert Bulla was the son of Julian and Sara Bulla and had two older sisters and a brother. He describes himself as being largely self-educated with a special passion for opera, music, painting, history and traveling. In his autobiography, A Grain of Wheat , Bulla tells of his determination to become a writer, a storyteller. Though his family didn?t encourage his hopes, he knew at a young age that writing was what he wanted to do and persevered, as many of his characters do in their own adventures.
Bulla has said that he never forgot how difficult reading was for some of his classmates. He has tried to make his own books easy to read but complex enough in content to interest older children as well as younger ones. Known for his capacity to write close-knit, strong, fast-moving plots and for using simple, direct language that conveys an innate understanding of children?s feelings and needs, Bulla has made a special impact on middle-grade readers over the years.
Bulla researches thoroughly before writing his historical novels. A Lion to Guard Us provides a vivid picture of the hardships endured by early settlers, as the three Freebold children make a perilous voyage across the Atlantic to join their father in squalid, fever-ridden Jamestown. The boy in Charlie's House makes the same crossing about a hundred years later, though not by choice. Kidnapped off the streets of London, he is sold as an indentured servant in America, where he has so few rights that his master can use him as a stake in a card game. But Charlie is determined to have a life of his own; he escapes and eventually prospers. Bulla's contemporary stories include Shoeshine Girl, the story of a tough ten-year-old who apprentices herself to an elderly shoeshine man and learns to value more than money, and The Chalk Box Kid, in which a boy's talent for drawing helps him cope with sudden changes after his father loses his job.
As well as being a prolific writer of children?s fiction, Bulla has written nonfiction and composed music for children?s song books and plays. A talented amateur painter and a better-than-amateur musician, he has composed songs for his own books and has also set Lois Lenski's poems to music. His accounts of opera plots (in three books, plus a fourth on Gilbert and Sullivan) are clear and concise. Los Angeles has been his home for many years and he has been an active member of the Author?s Guild and the Society of Children?s Book Writers and Illustrators.
Winner of the George G. Stone Center for Children?s Books Award in 1968, Squanto, Friend of the White Man received a Boy?s Club of America Gold Medal in 1955. Benito was cited as an outstanding juvenile book by the Author?s Club of Los Angeles and in 1971 Bulla received a Christopher Award for Pocahontas and the Strangers. Shoeshine Girl garnered many awards including a 1976 Southern California Council on Children?s Literature Award, the Charlie May Simon Award, the Sequoyah Children?s Book Award and the South Carolina Children?s Book Award. A Lion to Guard Us was cited as a 1982 Notable Children?s Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies. The Chalk Box Kid was an ALA Notable Children?s Book.
Received on Tue 29 May 2007 09:00:58 AM CDT
