Virginia Mathews | |
---|---|
Born | Virginia Hopper Mathews March 9, 1925 New York City, New York, U.S. |
Died | May 7, 2011 86) | (aged
Citizenship | Osage Nation American |
Occupation(s) | Writer, librarian |
Parent |
|
Relatives | John Hopper Mathews (brother) |
Virginia Winslow Hopper Mathews (1925-2011) was a literacy advocate and author. Mathews, the daughter of American Indian author John Joseph Mathews, co-founded the American Indian Library Association (AILA). She also helped develop Sesame Street while serving as a consultant to Children's Television Workshop, and she promoted activities to support literacy through libraries. [1]
Virginian H. Mathews was born on March 9, 1925, the first child of John Joseph Mathews and Virginia Winslow Hopper, in Manhattan. Her younger brother John Hopper Mathews was born in August the next year. John Joseph left the family in 1928. [2] Virginia did not see her father again until February 1939. [3] In the 1950s, they reconnected and grew closer. [4]
Matthews was a member of the Osage Nation. [5] Mathews graduated from the Beard School (now Morristown-Beard School) in Orange, NJ in 1942. After high school, she took college courses at Goucher College, the University of Geneva, and Columbia University. [6] In 2004, Morristown-Beard School awarded Mathews their Distinguished Alumni Award. [7]
Mathews wrote reviews of children's books for The New York Herald Tribune and The New York Times . She also served as Deputy Director and then Director of the National Book Committee. The committee selected the National Book Awards and promoted public literacy during a 14-year period (1957 to 1974). Mathews's work with the National Book Committee to promote reading also helped created National Library Week. [8] The Library of Congress now houses Mathews papers from her time working at the National Book Committee. [9]
After leaving the National Book Committee, Mathews worked for the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress. Mathews organized the 1979 and 1991 White House Conferences on Library and Information Services. [10] [11] She also helped develop the American Library Association's collaborations with Head Start. [9] She was a founder of the American Indian Library Association. [12]
During the 1960s, Mathews created the children's TV series Reading Out Loud with Westinghouse Broadcasting executive Mike Santangelo. Produced by Westinghouse for syndication, the show featured notable figures reading aloud their favorite books to children. It debuted in February 1960 on the five TV stations owned by Westinghouse in Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco. [13] Reading Out Loud also opened on WNTA-TV (now WNET-TV) in New York City and 46 educational TV stations around the U.S. It ran as a half-hour show for 15 episodes. [14] Reading Out Loud featured guest appearances by: [15]
Mathews was a lesbian and lived with her longtime partner, Virginia "Ginny" B. Huie (1920-2008). Her mother's sister, Phyllis Hopper, was also a lesbian and had dated Ginny before Mathews. Mathews died on May 7, 2011, in Central Pennsylvania and was buried in the Machpelah Presbyterian Cemetery next to Ginny. [12]
In 1965, the Women's National Book Association awarded Mathews their WNBA Book Award. [16] The American Indian Library Association awarded Mathews their Distinguished Service to Indian Libraries Award in 1993. Two years later, The Association for Library Service to Children also awarded Mathews a Distinguished Service Award. [8] In 2012, the American Indian Library Association named its library school scholarship after her. [17]
In 1994 Mathews was awarded American Library Association Honorary Membership.
Mathews' papers relating to her work as director, National Book Committee, Deputy Director, National Library Week, and consultant, Library of Congress Center for the Book are at the Library of Congress. [18]
Katherine Womeldorf Paterson is an American writer best known for children's novels, including Bridge to Terabithia. For four different books published 1975–1980, she won two Newbery Medals and two National Book Awards. She is one of four people to win the two major international awards; for "lasting contribution to children's literature" she won the biennial Hans Christian Andersen Award for Writing in 1998 and for her career contribution to "children's and young adult literature in the broadest sense" she won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award from the Swedish Arts Council in 2006, the biggest monetary prize in children's literature. Also for her body of work she was awarded the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature in 2007 and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal from the American Library Association in 2013. She was the second US National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, serving 2010 and 2011.
The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world.
Francis La Flesche was the first professional Native American ethnologist; he worked with the Smithsonian Institution. He specialized in Omaha and Osage cultures. Working closely as a translator and researcher with the anthropologist Alice C. Fletcher, La Flesche wrote several articles and a book on the Omaha, plus more numerous works on the Osage. He made valuable original recordings of their traditional songs and chants. Beginning in 1908, he collaborated with American composer Charles Wakefield Cadman to develop an opera, Da O Ma (1912), based on his stories of Omaha life, but it was never produced. A collection of La Flesche's stories was published posthumously in 1998.
May Hill Arbuthnot was an American educator, editor, writer, and critic who devoted her career to the awareness and importance of children's literature. Her efforts expanded and enriched the selection of books for children, libraries, and children's librarians alike. She was selected for American Libraries article “100 Most Important Leaders we had for the 20th Century”.
John Joseph Mathews became one of the Osage Nation's most important spokespeople and writers of the mid-20th century, and served on the Osage Tribal Council from 1934 to 1942. Mathews was born into an influential Osage family, the son of William Shirley Mathews an Osage Nation tribal councilor. He studied at the University of Oklahoma, Oxford University, and the University of Geneva and served as a pilot during World War I.
Virginia Haviland was an American librarian and writer who became an international authority in children's literature. She chaired the prestigious Newbery-Caldecott Award Committee, traveled and wrote extensively. Haviland is also well known for her Favorite Fairy Tales series, featuring stories from sixteen countries.
Sharon Mills Draper is an American children's writer, professional educator, and the 1997 National Teacher of the Year. She is a five-time winner of the Coretta Scott King Award for books about the young and adolescent African-American experience. She is known for her Hazelwood and Jericho series, Copper Sun,Double Dutch, Out of My Mind and Romiette and Julio.
The American Indian Library Association (AILA) is an affiliate of the American Library Association (ALA), and is a membership action group that focuses on the library-related needs of Native Americans and Alaska Natives. The organization's members consist of both individuals and institutions that are interested in improving library services to Native American people in any type of library in the United States.
Loriene Roy is an American scholar of Indigenous librarianship, professor and librarian from Texas. She was the first Native American president of the American Library Association when she was inaugurated in 2007.
Carla Diane Hayden is an American librarian who is serving as the 14th librarian of Congress. Since the creation of the office of the librarian of Congress in 1802, Hayden is both the first African American and the first woman to hold this post. Appointed in 2016, she is the first professional librarian to hold the post since 1974.
William Sherley "Old Bill" Williams was a noted mountain man and frontiersman, known as Lone Elk to the Native Americans. Fluent in several languages, Williams served as an interpreter for the government and led several expeditions to the West. He married into the Osage Nation, having two children who both married John Allen Mathews.
Maryanne Wolf is a scholar, teacher, and advocate for children and literacy around the world. She is the UCLA Professor-in-Residence of Education, Director of the UCLA Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice, and the Chapman University Presidential Fellow (2018-2022). She is also the former John DiBiaggio Professor of Citizenship and Public Service, Director of the Center for Reading and Language Research, and Professor in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development at Tufts University. She is a permanent academician in the Pontifical Academy of Science. She was recently made an Honorary Advisory Fellow on the United Sigma Intelligence Association.
The Jean E. Coleman Library Outreach Lecture presented at the annual conference of the American Library Association (ALA) is tribute to the work of Jean E. Coleman to ensure that all citizens, particularly Native Americans and adult learners, have access to quality library services. Dr. Coleman directed the ALA, Office for Literacy and Outreach Services (OLOS) which served the Association by identifying and promoting library services that support equitable access to the knowledge and information stored in our libraries. OLOS focused attention on services that are inclusive of traditionally underserved populations, including new and non-readers, people geographically isolated, people with disabilities, rural and urban poor people, and people generally discriminated against based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identification, age, language and social class. The Jean E. Coleman lecture is now sponsored by the Office for Diversity, Literacy and Outreach Services (ODLOS).
The Southeastern Library Association (SELA) is an organization that collaborates with different library associations within the Southeastern United States, including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.
Eleanor Bontecou was an American lawyer, civil rights advocate, law professor and government official. Bontecou served as an attorney and investigator for both the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. War Department. She also worked as a professor at two universities. During her career, Bontecou achieved national fame for her work in the civil liberties and women's rights movements.
Lindsay Barrett George is an American illustrator and author of children's books. George has achieved her greatest notoriety for her Long Pond and Who's Been Here? series of books. Her books focus on the themes of nature and the lives of animals that inhabit it. The Library of Congress named George's book Box Turtle at Long Pond a Children's Book of the Year in 1989.
Effie Lee Morris was an African American children’s librarian, educator, and activist, best known for her pioneering public library services for minorities and the visually-impaired. Morris developed Cleveland Public Library's first Negro History Week and was New York Public Library's first children's specialist for visually-impaired patrons. She was the first coordinator of children's services at San Francisco Public Library, where she was also the first African American to hold an administrative position.
Oralia Garza de Cortes is a librarian, advocate, bibliographer, and scholar. She has been honored by REFORMA with the Lifetime Achievement Award which recognizes excellence in librarianship over a career for one who has made significant and lasting contributions to Latino and Spanish-speaking communities.
Georgeann Robinson was an Osage teacher and businesswoman, who used her skill with ribbonwork to preserve the cultural heritage of her people. She was honored as a 1982 National Heritage Fellowship recipient by the National Endowment for the Arts and has works in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, Museum of International Folk Art of Santa Fe, New Mexico and in the Southern Plains Indian Museum in Anadarko, Oklahoma. As an activist, from 1958, she was active in the National Congress of American Indians and in the late 1960s, was the executive vice president of the organization.
John Hopper Mathews was an American and Osage Nation actor, professor, and research scientist.
{{citation}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)