Mara Rockliff | |
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Pen name | Lewis B. Montgomery Eleanor May Nan Walker |
Occupation | Writer |
Alma mater | Brown University |
Genre | Children's literature Picture books Chapter books |
Years active | 2004–present (as of 2023) |
Notable awards | Golden Kite Award Orbis Pictus Honor Sibert Honor |
Website | |
mararockliff |
Mara Rockliff (born 1969 or 1970) is an American author of children's books specializing in works based on true stories. [1] Her book Mesmerized: How Ben Franklin Solved a Mystery that Baffled All of France won an Orbis Pictus Honorfrom the National Council of Teachers of English. [2] The American Library Association selected her book Sweet Justice: Georgia Gilmore and the Montgomery Bus Boycott for a Sibert Honor. [3] [4] She also received the Golden Kite Award for Me and Momma and Big John. [5]
Rockliff began her career as an assistant editor for a textbook company in New York City. [6] This job involved research and many visits to the New York Public Library. [6] Later, she was a senior editor for Holt, Rinehart & Winston. [7]
Eventually, Rockliff became a freelance writer for educational publishers. [6] Using the pen names Eleanor May and Nan Walker, she wrote books for several educational series, including Math Matters, Science Solves It!, Social Studies Connects and, most notably, the Mouse Math series which includes more than fifteen titles. [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] The Mouse Math book, Albert the Muffin Maker, was the 2014 Moonbeam Children's Book Awards Bronze Medalist for Alphabet/Counting. [14]
Rockliff also wrote the twelve books of the Milo and Jazz Mysteries chapter book series using the pen name Lewis B. Montgomery. [15] [16] Booklist selected her book, The Case of the Stinky Socks from the Milo and Jazz series, for "100 Best Children's and YA Mysteries of the Past 10 Years." [15] The second book in the series, The Case of the Poisoned Pig, was nominated for an Agatha Award. [15]
Rockliff began publishing books under her name in 2005. [6] [17] In 2013, she won an Honor from the Ezra Jack Keats Book Award for her book My Heart Will Not Sit Down, a picture book about a girl in Cameroon who tries to raise money to help those who were starving in New York City during the Great Depression. [18] [19] [20] Her fourth book under the name Mara Rockliff, Me and Momma and Big John (2013), was nominated for the Charlotte Zolotow Award and won the Golden Kite Award from the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. [5] [21] The Charlotte Zolotow Award is the highest honor for writing in children's picture books. [22] The book is about an African American female stonecutter who helped build the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City in the 1970s. [23] [24]
Rockliff specializes in historical picture books for children, especially true stories about people who are not included in traditional histories. [1] [25] For example, she was inspired to write Born to Swing: Lil Hardin Armstrong's Life in Jazz when she realized female musicians were left out of the history of jazz music. [26] She has written books about the female magician Adelaide Herrmann, pioneering filmmaker Alice Guy Blaché, World War II engineer Beatrice Shilling, and suffragists Alice Burke and Nell Richardson. [27] [28] [29] [30] [31]
Rockliff enjoys baking and frequently incorporates baked goods or recipes in her books, testing the latter herself. [32] [25] Her Gingerbread for Liberty (2016) is about Christopher Ludwick, a Philadelphia baker who was too old to fight in the Revolutionary War but supported General George Washington's army by baking bread for the troops. [33] [34] Rockliff learned of Ludwick in a 1964 magazine article about Pennsylvania Dutch cooking traditions. [25] She says, "That grabbed me right away since it combined fun stuff for kids—sneaky secret agent, gingerbread—with fun historical stuff for parents and teachers. Also, I live in a very German part of Pennsylvania, and my daughter has Hessian ancestors on her father's side, so the topic had special interest to me." [25] Rockliff's Sweet Justice: Georgia Gilmore and the Montgomery Bus Boycott (2023) is another food-related book, telling the story of a lesser-known Civil Rights activist who raised money for the Montgomery Bus Boycott by cooking and selling food. [3] [4] [35]
Other books by Rockwell share unusual facts about famous people. Mesmerized: How Ben Franklin Solved a Mystery that Baffled All of France (2017) tells how Benjamin Franklin used the scientific method to debunk the mysterious powers of Franz Mesmer's magic wand. [36] [37] A similar title, 2020's Jefferson Measures a Moose (2020) tells how Thomas Jefferson used math to counter misinformation in a book about animals of the United States. [38] Rockliff says, " I thought this story could do for math and measurement what Mesmerized did for the scientific method." [39] In addition, Rockliff was exploring the concept of misinformation through the lens of current events in 2020. [39]
Rockliff learned Esperanto and began using it daily to talk with people worldwide in 2014. [40] This led to her writing Doctor Esperanto and the Language of Hope (2020), a book about L. L. Zamenhoff who invented the universal language of Esperanto. [41] [42] The book was selected as a Notable Picture Book by the Sydney Taylor Book Award. [41]
Rockliff considers herself a "research geek." [25] She studies interviews, newspapers, oral histories, and primary source materials to create her books, and also includes a list of primary sources in her history books. [39] She got the idea to write Try It! How Frieda Caplan Changed the Way We Eat (2021) when looking through the Jewish Women's Archive. [1] As a Jewish woman, Rockliff felt it was important to write a book about a Jewish woman like Frieda Caplan, who founded a specialty produce company and introduced kiwis, baby carrots, mushrooms, sugar snap peas, spaghetti squash, and mangos to consumers in the United States. [1] [43] [44] Rockliff worked with Caplan's daughter to create Try It! which was selected by Smithsonian magazine as one of the ten best children's books of 2021. [1] [45]
Rockliff graduated from Brown University where she studied American history and literature. [6] [54] She lives with her family in Pennsylvania. [25] [6] [16] [55]