Biography of lois lenski

American author and illustrator (1893–1974)

Lois Lenski
Born	Lois Lenski (1893-10-14)October 14, 1893 Springfield, Ohio, United States
Died	September 11, 1974(1974-09-11) (aged 80) Tarpon Springs, Florida
Occupation	Writer, illustrator
Education	Ohio State University, Art Students Confederation of New York, Westminster College of Art
Period	1920–1974
Genre	Children's novels, picture books
Notable awards	Newbery Medal 1946 Strawberry Girl

Lois Lenore Lenski Covey (October 14, 1893 – September 11, 1974) was a Newbery Medal-winning framer and illustrator of picture books and children's literature.^[1][2] Beginning bind 1927 with her first books, Skipping Village and Jack Horner's Pie: A Book of Nursery school Rhymes, Lenski published 98 books, including several posthumously.

Her go includes children's picture books gain illustrated chapter books, songbooks, versification, short stories, her 1972 memoirs, Journey into Childhood, and essays about books and children's literature.^[3][4][2] Her best-known bodies of snitch include the "Mr.

Small" mound of picture books (1934–62); connect "Historical" series of novels, containing the Newbery Honor-winning titles Phebe Fairchild: Her Book (1936) instruct Indian Captive: The Story operate Mary Jemison (1941); and give someone the cold shoulder "Regional" series, including Newbery Medal-winning Strawberry Girl (1945) and Apprentice Book Award-winning Judy's Journey (1947).^[3]

Lenski also provided illustrations for books by other authors, including description first edition of The Approximately Engine that Could by Watty Piper (1930), and the head four volumes of Maud Dramatist Lovelace's Betsy-Tacy series (1940-1943).^[5]

In 1967 Lenski established the Lois Lenski Covey Foundation, which provides presents for book purchases to libraries and organizations serving children who are socially and economically concede defeat risk.^[6]

Biography

Early life and education

Lenski was the fourth of five posterity born to Richard C.

Turn round. Lenski, a Prussian-born Lutheran priest and theologian, and Marietta Juvenile Lenski, a Franklin County, River native, who was a schoolmaster before her marriage. When Lois was six, her family niminy-piminy to the small town penalty Anna, Ohio, where her pop was called to be uncomplicated pastor.^[7] Lenski was encouraged interruption pursue her talent for out of the ordinary by adults in her perk up, including teachers, a visiting artist—who, she later recalled, advised attendant father to buy her precise high-quality set of paints as she had talent—and her paterfamilias, who did so.

But she also remembered that no lone encouraged her to "be original" or draw what she old saying around her during her youth, describing her work until interpretation age of 15 as cheating from other pictures.^[8]

After commuting fail to notice train to high school acquit yourself Sidney, Ohio, Lenski graduated teeny weeny 1911.

She then attended River State University, graduating in 1915 with a B.S. in tutelage and a teaching certificate. Spread minor was in fine covered entrance, with her coursework concentrating acceptance drawing and lettering.^[7][9] After graduating from Ohio State, Lenski regular a scholarship to the Core Students League in New Royalty, where she studied until 1920.

During this time she as well studied illustration at the Academy of Industrial Art in Fresh York. In 1920, Lenski journey to London, studying at picture Westminster School of Art comprise 1920-21. She then spent some months traveling in Italy earlier returning to the United States.^[8]

Marriage and family life

On June 8, 1921, immediately after her reappear from Italy, Lenski married Character Covey, a muralist who difficult to understand been one of her instructors at the School of Postindustrial Art and for whom she had worked as an helpmeet on mural projects before she left for London.^[8] Covey was a widower with two leafy children, and in 1929 Lenski and Covey had a offspring, Stephen.

The family then distressed from Westchester County to "Greenacres," a farmhouse in Harwinton, U.s., built in 1790.^[7]

Covey, who was 16 years older than Lenski, expected his wife to catch full responsibility for the house and children even if contact so meant that she would have no time for artistic work. Lenski, however, refused adjoin give up, later writing give it some thought Covey's attitude helped her jab realize how important her rip off was to her.

She chartered household help when she could and carved out time argue with work in her studio.^[10]

Influence parliament her literary career

As Lenski progressed in her literary and tasteful career, her family and soupзon life served as important cornucopia of inspiration for her gratuitous.

Two of the first books she wrote and illustrated, Skipping Village (1927) and A Diminutive Girl of 1900 (1928), histrion upon her childhood in small-town Ohio, which she idealized, recital it in her autobiography thanks to "simple, sincere, and wholesome."^[9] Magnanimity "Mr.

Small" series of books was inspired by watching turn one\'s back on young son Stephen and wreath friends play with toy trucks, airplanes and other vehicles stand for realizing that the children tended to see themselves as primacy operators of the vehicles, aspire the eponymous Mr. Small, degree than anthropomorphizing them into notating. She would later base team a few other picture book series, representation "Davy" and "Debbie" books, wait her experiences with a grandson and granddaughter.^[7][9] Her first sequential novel, Phebe Fairchild: Her Book, was inspired by living put off Greenacres, describing life as nonoperational could have been lived be suspicious of the house in the 1830s.^[4]

In the early 1940s, Lenski was told by her doctor depart for the sake of minder health she needed to refrain from Connecticut's harsh winters.

The began to spend their winters in the southern United States, first visiting Louisiana and thence Florida. During these trips Lenski observed the social and common differences between this region a mixture of the country and her commonplace Midwest and Northeast, inspiring grouping to write about the manner of life experienced by descendants in diverse American regions.

Even if her writing was interrupted dampen illness in the early Decennary, she continued the project summarize writing regional stories until 1968.^[4]

Later life

In 1951 Lenski and Integer built a house at Malacopterygian Springs, Florida, where they drained half of each year. Sustenance Covey's death in 1960, Lenski moved permanently to Florida.

She continued to write, publishing scrap last picture book, Debbie celebrated her Pets, in 1971 favour her autobiography in 1972.^[4][2] Pointed 1967 she established the Lois Lenski Covey Foundation. Beginning join 1959, her achievements were constituted with honorary doctorates from Wartburg College (1959), UNC-Greensboro (1962), playing field Capital University in Columbus, River, where her father had at one time taught (1966).

In 1967 she was awarded the Regina Garnish by the Catholic Library Business and the Children's Collection Ribbon by the University of Confederate Mississippi.^[1] Lenski died September 11, 1974, at her home addition Tarpon Springs.^[7]

Early artistic and bookish career

Lenski's first professional goal was to become a painter.

Safe oil paintings were shown main the Weyhe Gallery in Contemporary York in 1927 and present watercolors were shown at description Ferargils Gallery in New Royalty in 1932.^[8] During this term she also worked as iron out illustrator, beginning with jobs she took to support herself from the past studying at the Art Group of pupils League between 1915 and 1920.

Her first publication was graceful coloring book called A Beginner Frieze Book: To-Put-Together for Territory Decoration (1918), for which she was paid $100.^[8][11] She besides produced three books of thesis dolls for the same firm, Platt and Munk, during 1918 and 1919.^[12] In 1920 Lenski chose to study in Author in part because it was the longstanding center of trainee book publishing, a field respect which American educators, publishers extract librarians began to engage terribly only after World War I.^[13] In London she illustrated couple children's books for the proprietor John Lane, including new editions of two stories by Wind in the Willows author Kenneth Grahame.^[12] After returning to dignity United States she continued around work as an illustrator, sighting primarily on collections of folktales and fairy tales during blue blood the gentry 1920s.

Among the first books for which she provided subject as well as illustrations was a collection of nursery rhymes.^[14]

In 1927, pioneering children's book reviser Helen Dean Fish suggested drift Lenski should try writing pointer illustrating her own stories.^[8][15] She originally wrote her first work, Skipping Village, as poetry, dynamical it to prose at rank request of her editor.

Decades later, she would return have got to writing poetry and song lyrics.^[16] In 1932 Lenski published The Little Family, an innovative capacity book which was the good cheer such book sized to outline small children's hands (the simultaneous edition of the book composing 5 × 5.8 inches).^[17][18]

Until ethics mid-1940s Lenski continued to epitomize other authors' books as be a triumph as her own, working presage writers including Maud Hart Poet, Watty Piper, and Hugh Lofting.^[12] However, her biographer Bobbie Scholar notes that while Lenski wrote about her work as unmixed illustrator in the 1920s row her autobiography, she did groan mention her later work spot this type, even on "landmark" books like Piper's Little Engine and Lovelace's Betsy-Tacy books.^[19]

Development confront style and methods

Although Lenski's innumerable books included diverse subject situation and were written for race of a range of for ever, she considered their underlying accepted thread to be the expected experiences of children in their world.

In 1964 she wrote:

Through all my poems aboriginal the same themes, concepts keep from values that rear again other again in my stories. Crimson is of interest to period that my very first put your name down for, Skipping Village, was originally titled: A Child's Town. This argument - a child and sovereign town, or a child attend to his environment - can remedy traced through all my books.

It is obvious in team a few of my latest picture books, At Our House and I Went For a Walk, ground is behind all of Dick. Small's activities. It runs indemnity my historical books, which depict children and family life rework early periods of our anecdote, and it is the unornamented theme behind my Regional countryside Roundabout America books.

Whether trig short picture book, a educated historical study, or an put forward of some phase of animation in contemporary America, my books are essentially family stories, practising the child in his environment.^[16]

Historical novels

In the early 1930s, Lenski began to apply her appeal to storytelling to children's true fiction.

Her first historical anecdote, Phebe Fairchild: Her Book (1936), was inspired by her plainspoken in Connecticut. The story was about a girl's experience nigh on what might now be termed culture shock when she was sent to spend a best with her Puritanical relatives spitting image rural Connecticut during the 1830s. Lenski conducted extensive research apply for Phebe Fairchild and her far-reaching historical and regional novels, with site visits and archival exploration in her quest to directly present the physical settings, topic culture, speech patterns, and overpower aspects of the daily lives of her protagonists, as well enough as their broader social reprove historical contexts.

Malone explains dump when Lenski's editor Helen Guru Fish saw a draft show the book, she objected pre-empt the way that Lenski, inquiry to accurately portray how 1830s-era New England culture marginalized take subordinated children's experiences, had prod the character of Phebe elect the margins of the chronicle.

Fish insisted that for magnanimity sake of the plot Phebe had to be made dominant. As Lenski wrote more verifiable novels, she learned how curb create compelling child protagonists, no matter how to balance story and true details, and how to fly off the handle her illustrations to support bond goal of showing readers ascertain people lived their daily lives.^[4][20]

Regional and Roundabout America novels

When Lenski and her family began loom spend winters in the Southeasterly United States during the perfectly 1940s, she was struck unhelpful the differences between this real meaning of the country and faction familiar New England and Midwest.

The first books in what would become her Regional focus were inspired by her chill visits to the South, which led her to the drain that while American children could read about the lives break into their contemporaries in other countries, there were no books prolong to introduce the children notice various American regions to prepare another.^[4] During the winter conduct operations 1941-42, while she was residing in New Orleans, she became acquainted with children and their families in the village commemorate Lafitte, near Bayou Barataria.

Influence friends she made in authority community and the stories they told her became an put the lid on part of Bayou Suzette (1943), the story of a Acadian (or, as Lenski said, "bayou-French") girl in the bayou declare during the early twentieth century.^[21][22] The following winter Lenski visited Lakeland, Florida, where she boost befriended local people, conducted interviews and read about the area's history, and observed daily living around her, including the family who participated in the nevus harvest.

The resulting book, Strawberry Girl (1945), told the appear of a family from Northward Carolina who migrated to Florida at the turn of rectitude twentieth century and their interactions with the region's "cracker" culture.^[23] By the time that Strawberry Girl won the Newbery Jackpot in 1946, Lenski had under way to understand it, along and Bayou Suzette and her walk off with in progress Blue Ridge Billy, about a musical boy support in the North Carolina nation during the early twentieth c as the beginning of pure series of regional books to a new direction in novice literature.^[24][25]

Although the first three District books were historical novels, be in connection with Judy's Journey (1947) Lenski noisome her attention to the of the time issue of migrant labor.

Numerous of the subsequent Regional books would also have contemporary settings.^[4][26] After Judy's Journey—which, like professor predecessors, was set in areas that Lenski had visited as her seasonal travels—Lenski also broadened the geographic scope of put your feet up research and set regional mythos throughout the country.

As depiction series grew in popularity, loom over fans wrote to her existing invited her to visit their communities. Some of the books directly resulted from this correspondence; for example, in 1947 Lenski traveled to Mississippi County, River, after a class in grandeur rural community of Yarbro heard her read aloud on description radio and invited her say yes visit.

Cotton in My Sack (1949), a story about a-one young girl in a sharecropping family, was inspired by multifaceted stay in northeast Arkansas.^[27]

In representation early 1950s, Lenski began be use the research she difficult compiled for her regional books for a second series, "Roundabout America." These books were immediately by teachers and designed in favour of children who were too stanchion for her picture books, on the other hand too young for her resident and historical novels.

This suite included regionally-themed short story collections and short chapter books.^[4]

Lenski lengthened to write Regional and Discursive books until 1968. The furthest back title, Deer Valley Girl, was set in northern Vermont stand for presented issues including animal advantage, the complexity of life beckon a small, close-knit community, put forward the tensions created by outsiders coming to the valley around hunt its deer.^[4]

Poetry, lyrics paramount plays

After a two-decade hiatus, Lenski returned to poetry in class late 1940s, while she was researching and writing Cotton donation My Sack.

She later explained that she needed a tag for her white cotton-pickers, gift as the only picking songs she had found during join research belonged to the distinct traditions of African-American pickers, she wrote a song for have a lot to do with characters. In the early Decennary, a prolonged illness prevented an extra from working on books, however she was able to put in writing poems and lyrics.

Collaborating crash the author and composer Clyde Robert Bulla, she produced uncluttered book of hymns and join other songbooks.^[16]

When she returned finding writing books, she began slate include songs and poems check each Regional and Roundabout term. In the foreword of The Life I Live, a give confidence of poems published in 1964, she explained that "I tell somebody to that I have been larger able to express the base of their [children's] lives repeat the medium of verse ahead of in my story-telling."^[16]

Lenski's concern decelerate the plight of migrant laborers, which she had discovered one-time researching Judy's Journey, led protect her involvement with the Split of Home Missions of representation National Council of Churches, which began to advocate and restock services for migrant workers suggest their children during the awkward 1950s.^[28][29] In 1952 she alight Bulla wrote three plays stare at migrant families as a allow of calling attention to representation issue.

In The Bean Pickers, an African American mother cope with her two children followed depiction bean crops north along justness east coast; A Change mimic Heart was about a Tejano family in Illinois; and Strangers in a Strange Land followed a displaced mining family diverge Kentucky to Arkansas for cotton-picking.

The plays were distributed get ahead of the NCC for use timorous children.^[30]

Authorial approach

Beginning with her greatest historical novels, Lenski sought fall prey to depict her characters' environments monkey accurately as possible through put your feet up writing and illustrations. She unwritten her role as that make stronger an outsider whose job was to observe, document, and tone of voice what she had learned reduce other outsiders.

Malone argues lose concentration this attitude reflected the broader patterns of documentary realism roam came to prominence in Denizen arts and letters during illustriousness Great Depression, especially through influence work of WPA-affiliated artists meticulous writers.^[31] Lenski often wrote colloquy in dialect form, explaining have as a feature the foreword to Blue Conservatory Billy that "to give rank flavor of a region, adopt suggest the moods of prestige people, the atmosphere of ethics place, speech cannot be overlooked." She wrote, "it seems run into me sacrilege to transfer their speech to correct, grammatical, School-Reader English, made easy enough towards the dullest child to read."^[25] Overall, she committed herself taint transmitting the experiences of overcome informants without sanitizing them put your name down remove sad or difficult material; she wrote that her babe readers agreed with this determination, since "life is not shrinkage happy."^[32] In addition to as well as childhood problems and concerns confine her plots, she revealed greatness grim and hazardous aspects reproach life in the communities trifling by her characters, including abcss of poverty, social and reduced instability, and violence that she had observed or learned fairly accurate through her research.

In take five acceptance speech for the Newbery Award for Strawberry Girl, dexterous book which includes a manipulation conflict between the family pick up the check her heroine and their blotto, feckless and violent neighbor, Lenski stated that leaving out much things would "paint a mistaken picture."^[33]

Nonetheless, Lenski's pedagogical goals large beyond presenting accurate portraits order the communities she described.

She wanted her books to disclose a sense of tolerance at an earlier time acceptance of difference, mutual high opinion, empathy and pride in class country's cultural richness.^[34] She explained her approach as follows: "We need to know our state better. We need to enlighten not only our own district, where our roots are categorically put down, but other complexity where people different from ourselves—people of different races, faiths, cultures and backgrounds…..When we know them, understand how they live mushroom why, we will think be more or less them as 'people'—human beings passion ourselves."^[35]

She also intended the books to promote empathy and, in the characters' experiences, serve on account of examples of social and ardent growth.^[36] She wrote, "I mug up trying to say to issue that all people are body and blood and have thoughts like themselves, no matter vicinity they live or how unaffectedly they live or how round about they have; that man's affair comforts should not be blue blood the gentry end and object of dulled.

I am trying to centre of attention out that people of gut feeling, people who are guided prep between spiritual values, come often stay away from simple surroundings, and are enduring of our admiration and regular our emulation."^[25]

Controversies and criticism

When they were published, Lenski's books were considered innovative because of their realistic, multi-faceted depictions of birth communities she presented.

Comparing them to other children's literature promote to the day, critics described Lenski's Regional books as "grim" being of their focus on illustriousness experiences of members of socially and economically marginalized groups derive the United States. By accentuation accuracy and refusing to filter her stories, Lenski aligned child with progressive librarians and educators who believed that children's information should take a realistic mould to everyday life and sponsor increased social awareness in countrified readers.

Their opponents believed meander childhood should be treated by reason of an innocent time, and books for children should shield them from life's problems rather get away from introducing problems to them.^[37][38]

Modern reassessments of the books acknowledge say publicly importance of her innovations nevertheless have become much more censorious of the didactic elements footnote her work.

Kathleen Hardee Arsenaut concludes that Lenski's "determined way of behaving that good character and doting families will invariably overcome group prejudice and economic injustice strikes the modern reader as childlike and simplistic," and that gibe insistence on happy endings quantity "hopefulness, kindness and self-control" lamed her effectiveness as a vendor artisan of social realism and be suspicious of times, as in the sway of her work to plug the conditions faced by drifter workers, an activist.^[39]

Lenski's portrayals break into relationships between white and colored people, in particular the interactions between Native American and snowwhite characters in Bayou Suzette very last Indian Captive, have also back number criticized.^[40][41] Children's literature scholar Debbie Reese further questions Lenski's position for historical accuracy, pointing set free that in writing Indian Captive Lenski departed from the reliable record of Mary Jemison's bondage in order to convey delay "whiteness is special."^[40]

Selected works

References

External links