Jean Craighead George

Many wonderful authors, illustrators, and others in the world of children’s books passed away last year. Their works have enriched our lives and collections and brought joy to countless children.

School Library Journal regrets any omissions. Please add to our list in the comments section.

January 30 – Bill Wallace, 64, author of more than 30 books, including A Dog Called Kitty (Holiday House, 1980).

February 2 – Joyce Barkhouse, 98, Canadian author of the Pit Pony (Gage, 1989) and other works of historical fiction.

February 3 – John Christopher, 89, British science-fiction author, whose real name was Samuel Youd.  He’s best known for his “Tripods” trilogy (Macmillan).

February 24 – Jan Berenstain, 88, cocreator, with her husband, Stan, of some of the world’s most-beloved kids’ book characters, the Berenstain Bears.

May 4 – Maurice Sendak, 83, one of the most recognizable names in children’s literature.

May 15 – Jean Craighead George, 92, Newbery-winning author and naturalist.

May 25 – Peter D. Sieruta, 53, creator of the popular blog Collecting Children’s Books.

May 26 – Ellen Levine, 73, activist and author of the Caldecott Honor book, Henry’s Freedom Box (Scholastic, 2007).

May 26 – Leo Dillon, 79, the first African American to win the Caldecott Medal.

July 11 – Donald J. Sobol, 87, creator of the popular “Encyclopedia Brown” (T. Nelson) mystery series.

July 12 –Else Homelund Minarik, 91, creator of the “Little Bear” (Harper) series.

July 23 – Margaret Mahy, 76, New Zealand author of more than 100 books.

Josepha Sherman

July 31 – Mollie Hunter, 90, Scottish author of children’s and young adult books.

August 2 – Jean Merrill, 89, author of The Pushcart War (Scott, 1964), one of the 20th century’s best social satires for children.

August 9 – Jose Aruego, 80, illustrator of Leo the Late Bloomer (Windmill, 1971).

August 14 – Remy Charlip, 83, dancer, actor, and an award-winning author and illustrator of more than 30 children’s books.

Irving Adler

August 22 -  Nina Bawden, 87, author of the World War II novel Carrie’s War (Gollancz, 1973).

August 23 – Josepha Sherman, 65, sci-fi and fantasy author.

September 22 – Irving Adler, 99, social activist and prolific author of math and science books for children.

November 23 – Sandra McLeod Humphrey, 76, award-winning author of children’s books on character development.

What is reassuring is that we know that children of all ages can think critically about the world in creative ways, particularly when they are given robust and developmentally appropriate texts as part of a well-crafted, student-centered curriculum. These specific groupings of books or multimodal digital texts are referred to as clusters, or text sets. Situating students within the context of a text cluster allows librarians and teachers to use their collections in new ways. Teachers already have tried-and-true books and can use their library to build outward—moving from highlighting a single text to using a text cluster.

Not only do clusters offer an opportunity to differentiate reading, they create a synergy within the curriculum, allowing students to consider multiple perspectives. When readers see that knowledge is not fixed, that there is no single way to represent an idea, a literary theme, a historical event, or a scientific concept, they see the role of the author in new and exciting ways. When given the opportunity to pen their own works, they can apply what they have learned about a variety of different genres and text types.

Text clusters, or text sets, offer rich opportunities in science, language arts, social studies, and the related arts such as music and art. Here are specific ways to use clusters in your library and classroom, and in your work with grade-level teams.

Clustering Concepts: Ecosystems

Text clusters can be used as a tool to teach science content standards as well as the Common Core State Standards for language arts and content literacy. Let’s say you are working with a third grade teacher who is teaching ecosystems or animal habitats. Most likely, your library has a variety of books on different ecosystems and animal habitats to support student inquiry. But to explore that topic with a tighter focus, and model the thinking across texts, the unit could launch with an exploration of how ecosystems change over time.

First, recommend that the teacher read aloud Joyce Sidman’s Song of the Water Boatman (Houghton Mifflin, 2005), illustrated by Beckie Prange. Moving from spring to winter, the book carries readers through four seasons in the life cycle of a pond. On each spread a poem, a nonfiction paragraph, and a woodcut illustration can be found.

Follow that title with the nonfiction picture storybook The Wolves are Back (Penguin, 2008) by Jean Craighead George, about the restoration of wolves in Yellowstone National Park. Students will understand what happens when one animal is removed from an ecosystem, and how that ecosystem shifts its balance when the animal returns.

Finally, the class could explore Thomas F. Yezerski’s Meadowlands (Farrar, 2011), an illustrated history of the wetlands region in northern New Jersey. In small groups, children can discuss how an entire ecosystem can suffer extensive damage and yet manage to rebuild itself over time. Each of these titles offers a different perspective and models a different text structure (poems and paragraphs; narrative; exposition) that youngsters can reference as they they compose in response to the study.

Clustering Biographies: Powerful Pairs and Triplets

Since biographies of the famous and infamous are abundant and ever increasing, it’s easy to put together “bio-clusters.” Start small with two titles that can be compared, and then build larger collections of books, and primary and secondary sources (photographs, prints, letters, newspaper articles, maps, political cartoons). Here are a couple of book clusters to get started.

Powerful Pairs: Beginning with Biographies

The CCSStandards call for us to begin comparing two texts on the same topic with students as early as kindergarten. Picture books are a good place to start because it’s easy for young readers to spot the differences in illustrated works. Using biographies about the same person is one way to show children that informational texts on the same topic are not the same.

For example, two picture books about Jane Goodall, can be used to highlight different approaches to the same information. That is, not all authors select the identical information to spotlight. Me…Jane (Little, Brown, 2011) written and illustrated by Patrick McDonnell ends with a young Jane Goodall going to sleep and dreaming of her future on the continent of Africa where she studies animals. When readers turn the page, Goodall, wakes up as an adult. The dream has been realized.

In contrast, Jeanette Winter’s The Watcher (Random, 2011), children receive a fuller story of how Goodall saved her money, traveled to Africa, and met the scientist Louis Leakey. It was Leakey who suggested that Goodall study chimpanzees in Tanzania.

Both books also provide unique kinds of visual information. Me…Jane contains actual writing and illustrations by the young Goodall, who as a girl, organized a group called The Alligator Society. The Watcher presents pictures of Goodall’s early life in small, tightly framed images. In contrast, once the woman begins working with chimpanzees, the pictures burst out of their frames and become two-page spreads. Her joy and sense of the freedom are obvious.

Terrific Triplets: A Cluster of Biographies

In books for older readers, bio-clusters raise additional questions about how history is written. The following titles bring readers face to face with contradictory information. In Amelia Lost (Random, 2011) author Candace Fleming casts doubt on Earhart’s claim that she saw her first airplane at the 1908 Iowa State Fair when she was 11 years old. According to Fleming’s research, there were no planes in Iowa at that time. She suggests that the aviatrix fabricated stories to suit an image she wanted to project.

Two other books, Amelia Earhart (Abrams, 2008), by Shelley Tanaka, and Corinne Szabo’s photobiography, Sky Pioneer (National Geographic, 1997), report that Earhart saw a plane at the fair as fact. The authors of these titles relied on Earhart’s own writings. Here is an opportunity to discuss with students that the sources authors consult can matter and that they may present conflicting information.

This cluster presents many additional opportunities to make comparisons. There are differences in text organization, visual information, theme, and more. Using these books, educators can initiate important conversations about craft and structure, the use of evidence to support ideas, and point-of-view.

Professional Sources Can Guide You

There are many ways to use text clusters or text sets in the library and in the classroom. What we have offered is a mere starting point. Professional resources are available to provide additional guidance as you begin working with clusters.

Eds. Note- two of the authors of this article have written relevant texts on the subject.

Myra Zarnowski’s History Makers (Heinemann, 2003) outlines how to compare biographies using such criteria as accuracy, style, illustration, theme, and selection and interpretation of information. A data chart is provided for gathering information and student samples show how it is done. In Making Sense of History (Scholastic, 2006) Zarnowski describes a hands-on approach for learning about multiple perspectives in history books.

For an up-to-date source on planning with clusters of nonfiction material, see Mary Ann Cappiello & Erika Thulin Dawes’s Teaching with Text Sets (Shell Education, 2012). This book describes innovative ways to incorporate nonfiction literature, as well as other genres, in the classroom while achieving CCSS and content standards. It provides both ready-to-use ideas and guidance for developing your own units of study using specific text models.

Jean Craighead George. Photo by Rocco Staino.

Friends, admirers, and a white wolf gathered earlier this month to pay tribute to Newbery-winning author and naturalist Jean Craighead George, who died on May 15 at the age of 92.

Speakers noted the many sides of this renowned author: fearless individual, animal lover, staunch Democrat, ardent women’s rights advocate, and opponent to war.

Children, librarians, and publishers were very much in evidence during the celebration, held at the Robert E. Bell Middle School in Chappaqua, NY, which George’s children attended, and where George herself often spoke over the years.

“Jean was always eager to meet young readers,” recalled Chappaqua Library director Pam Thornton. No question was too trivial for the author, Thornton said. “She always spent time with each child, whom she treated with respect.”

George’s longtime editors, Katherine Tegen of HarperCollins and Lucia Monfried of Dutton, both recalled adventures with George during many American Library Association conferences. Monfried fondly remembered visiting the New Orleans aquarium during one conference and spoke of George’s concern for the aquarium’s inhabitants following Hurricane Katrina.

A white wolf, visiting from the Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem, NY, at the Memorial. Photo by Rocco Staino.

Despite a 42-year age difference between Tegen and George, Tegen considered the author a friend who encouraged her to try new things—such as sneaking away from a conference in Kentucky to go to the races at Churchill Downs.

The authors and illustrators in attendance included Seymour Simon, Tor Seidler, Jean Van Leeuwen, Barbara Dana, and Wendell Minor.

Simon called George “a giant,” comparing her science writing to that of environmentalists Rachel Carson (Silent Spring, Houghton Mifflin, 1962) and Millicent Selsam, author of over 100 science books for children.

Seidler recalled being introduced to George, along with legendary children’s book editor Charlotte Zolotow, by William C. Morris, the children’s literature innovator after whom the Morris Award is named. Following that meeting, Seidler and George became fast friends.

Amy Kellman, retired head of children’s services at the Carnegie Library, traveled from Pittsburgh to speak to the 200 attendees about her friendship with George over the years.

But perhaps the most fitting guest at the event was a white wolf, visiting from the Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem, NY. George’s Chappaqua home was a veritable menagerie that attracted neighborhood children, and George herself often visited the Wolf Conservation Center with her frequent collaborator, illustrator Wendell Minor.

Their last book together, The Eagles Are Back (Dial), is due for release in March 2013. Like Julie of the Wolves (Harper, 1972), which earned George her 1973 Newbery Medal, it is about wolves.

The ceremony closed with Barbara Dana singing a song based on one composed by George and her son Craig.

Donations in Jean Craighead George’s memory may be made to the Chappaqua Library, the Wolf Conservation Center, and Teatown Lake Reservation.

George wrote more than 100 books for young adults, including the Newbery Medal-winning Julie of the Wolves (Harper, 1972). Since writing her first book, Vulpes, the Red Fox (Dutton) in 1949, which she co-wrote with then-husband John L. George, she strived to bring a love of nature to her readers.

George went on to connect kids with wildlife in her Newbery Honor book, My Side of the Mountain (Dutton, 1959), which tells a story of a 12-year-old boy named Sam Gribley who runs away from his cramped New York City apartment to find his grandfather’s abandoned farm in the Catskill Mountains. There he befriends a peregrine falcon and a weasel.

“I believe it will be read year after year, linking together many generations in a chain of well-remembered joy and refreshment,” wrote Ruth Hill Viguers in her review the book for The Horn Book. To this day, visitors stop at the Cannon Free Library in Delhi, NY, where Gribley befriends a librarian, to ask questions about the book. My Side of the Mountain was placed on the Hans Christian Andersen Award 1959 honors list.

Like Maurice Sendak, George worked with Ursula Nordstrom, a legendary publisher and editor-in-chief of juvenile books at Harper & Row from 1940 to 1973. It was Nordstrom who gave George the green light to write Julie of the Wolves after the author saw an Eskimo girl during a visit to Barrow, AK, and came up with the idea of a girl who communicated with wolves.

Catherine Balkin, who worked at HarperCollins Children’s Books for nearly 14 years setting up author appearances in schools and libraries, remembers George as “pleasant, easy going and extremely funny.”

When Balkin asked George if she had any dietary restrictions, her reply was, “I’ll eat anything on the menu, including moose, caribou, elk, seal meat, or whale blubber.”

Jane Friedman, the CEO and founder of Open Road Media, and former CEO of HarperCollins, says George was a very strong, outspoken, and opinionated writer “in the best sense of all of those words.”

“She knew her own mind and was the best thing you could say about anyone—she was her own woman.”

Wendell Minor, an illustrator and longtime collaborator with George, says her death is “like losing my mother. It leaves a tremendous hole in my life, but we gave it our best.” The two met on Earth Day in 1990 and closely collaborated, traveling to Alaska, the Florida Everglades, and Yellowstone National Park to research their books.

“She was a pioneer in children’s nature writing and brought it to a high standard,” adds Minor. “She wanted to get everything right and could withstand the scrutiny of the scientific community.”

An SLJ review of their collaboration on The Buffalo Are Back (Dutton, 2010) describes it as “eloquent and affecting.” “The writing transports readers onto the plains and into the past, making the devastation sobering and real,” the review reads. Their last book together, The Eagles Are Back (Dial), is due for release in March 2013.

George was born on July 2, 1919 into a family of naturalists. After graduating from Pennsylvania State University, she became one of the first women journalists to join the White House Press Corps.

She married George in 1944 and became a professor’s wife, a mother, and a magazine writer. George and her husband wrote some of her early books together, and they divorced in 1963.

In 1991, George became the first winner of the Knickerbocker Award for juvenile literature, given by the school library media section of the New York Library Association for the “consistent superior quality” of her literary works.

Although highly praised, Julie of the Wolves was often challenged in schools because it included a martial rape scene. The book ranked 32 on the American Library Association’s list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-1999 and 91 on the 2000-2009 list.

SLJ visited George in her longtime Chappaqua, NY, home in 2009 to conduct a 90th birthday interview. When asked about her legacy, George said, “Remember me as somebody who talked about nature, who awakened them to a new world, and helped them restore it.”

She is survived by three children, her daughter, Carolyn Laura (Twig), and two sons, John Craighead and Thomas Luke, and six grandchildren.