Katherine Womelsdorf 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.
Walk Two Moons is a novel written by Sharon Creech, published by HarperCollins in 1994 and winner of the 1995 Newbery Medal. The novel was originally intended as a follow-up to Creech's previous novel Absolutely Normal Chaos; but, the idea was changed after she began writing it.
Laurence Michael Yep is an American writer. He is known for his children's books, having won the Newbery Honor twice for his Golden Mountain series. In 2005, he received the biennial Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal for his career contribution to American children's literature.
Elaine Lobl Konigsburg was an American writer and illustrator of children's books and young adult fiction. She is one of six writers to win two Newbery Medals, the venerable American Library Association award for the year's "most distinguished contribution to American children's literature."
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH is a 1971 children's science fiction/fantasy book by Robert C. O'Brien, with illustrations by Zena Bernstein. The novel was published by the New York City publishing house Atheneum Books.
Robin McKinley is an American author best known for her fantasy novels and fairy tale retellings. Her 1984 novel The Hero and the Crown won the Newbery Medal as the year's best new American children's book. In 2022, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association named her the 39th Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master in recognition of her significant contributions to the literature of science fiction and fantasy.
Edward Irving Wortis, better known by the pen name Avi, is an American author of young adult and children's literature. He is a winner of the Newbery Medal and twice one of the runners-up.
Cynthia Kadohata is a Japanese American children's writer best known for her young adult novel Kira-Kira which won the Newbery Medal in 2005. She won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2013 for The Thing About Luck.
Jean Carolyn Craighead George was an American writer of more than one hundred books for children and young adults, including the Newbery Medal-winning Julie of the Wolves and Newbery runner-up My Side of the Mountain. Common themes in George's works are the environment and the natural world. Beside children's fiction, she wrote at least two guides to cooking with wild foods and one autobiography published 30 years before her death, Journey Inward.
Sylvia Louise Engdahl is an American writer, known best for science fiction. Her debut novel Enchantress from the Stars, published by Atheneum Books in 1970, was the 1971 Newbery Honor Book, was a Geffen Award finalist in 2008, Best Translated YA Book, and she won the Phoenix Award for that work twenty years later.
Nancy Farmer is an American author of children's and young adult books and science fiction. She has written three Newbery Honor Books and won the U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature for The House of the Scorpion, published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers in 2002.
Virginia Esther Hamilton was an American children's books author. She wrote 41 books, including M. C. Higgins, the Great (1974), for which she won the U.S. National Book Award in category Children's Books and the Newbery Medal in 1975.
M. C. Higgins, the Great, first published in 1974, is a realistic novel by Virginia Hamilton that won the 1975 Newbery Medal for excellence in American children's literature. It also won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award; it was the first of only two books to do so.
Dragon of the Lost Sea is a fantasy novel by American author Laurence Yep. It was first published in 1982 and is the first book in his Dragon series. Having already written several books, Yep had wanted to adapt Chinese mythology into a fantasy form for some time, and began writing the story in 1980 after undertaking careful research. He had originally intended to adapt a Chinese folktale in which the Monkey King captured a river spirit who had flooded an entire city, which he at first tried to conceive in picture book form.
Dragon Cauldron is a fantasy novel by American author Laurence Yep first published in 1991. It is the third book in his Dragon tetralogy. Dragon Cauldron marks a shift in narration from Shimmer, who had narrated the first two books in the series, to Monkey, who had up to that point played a minor role. Yep found it necessary to change narrative voices after six years of trying to write Dragon Cauldron. Monkey's status as an immortal made him "naturally cheerful even in the most dire of situations. Tough and yet funny, his consciousness provided the right platform from which I could observe a world in crisis". He had to modify the outline he had been working with as he decided that it would be necessary to kill off at least one character in order to provide "jeopardy" to Shimmer and her companions, which in turn would convey drama and emotional truth. This also allowed him to incorporate new material based on Chinese folklore that he had researched, forming the basis for the characters the Smith, the Snail Woman, and the Nameless One.
The Dragon series is a tetralogy of fantasy novels by American author Laurence Yep. Yep had already written several books including the Newbery Honor novel Dragonwings by 1980, when, after undertaking careful research, he decided to adapt Chinese mythology into a fantasy form, something he had always wanted to do since he had sold his first science fiction story at 18. He "tried to stay true to the spirit" of these myths, but did not try "to keep their exact details". The "perfect vehicle" he chose was a folktale in which the Monkey King captured a river spirit who had flooded an entire city, which he at first tried to conceive in picture book form. However, he kept questioning the motivations of the river spirit, whom he had renamed Civet. This resulted in the realization, as his outline ballooned exponentially from eight to 800 pages, that he would need a series as opposed to just one book to tell her story.
Mary Buff and Conrad Buff II were married creators of illustrated children's books. Between 1937 and 1968, they collaborated on both text and illustrations to produce 14 books; four times they were a runner-up for the Caldecott Medal or Newbery Medal. They had a profound impact on children's literature in the middle of the 20th century.
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is a fantasy-adventure children's novel inspired by Chinese folklore. It was written and illustrated by Grace Lin and published in 2009. The novel received a 2010 Newbery Honor and the 2010 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature. It has been translated into Chinese, French, Hebrew, Romanian, Korean and Slovene.
Dragon's Gate is a children's historical novel by Laurence Yep, published by HarperCollins in 1995. It inaugurated the Golden Mountain Chronicles and is the third chronicle in narrative sequence among ten published as of 2012.
Kelly Barnhill is an American author of children's literature, fantasy, and science fiction. Her novel The Girl Who Drank the Moon was awarded the 2017 Newbery Medal. Kirkus Reviews named When Women Were Dragons one of the best science fiction and fantasy books of 2022.
