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The Simmons College Center for the Study of Children's Literature is an academic program at Simmons College specializing in the critical study of children's literature. The program was founded in 1977, and was the first program in the United States to offer a master's degree in the field.
Currently, the program offers an MA and an MFA. It also offers an institute to the children's literature academic community in alternate summers. Guest speakers in previous years have included such notables as Louis Sachar, Maurice Sendak, Robert Cormier, Daniel Handler, and Lois Lowry. In 1986, a collection of speeches from the summer institute was published as Innocence and Experience: Essays and Conversations on Children's Literature, edited by Gregory Maguire and Barbara Harrison. The Lion and the Unicorn Poetry Award is presented at the institute.
The program is currently directed by Cathryn Mercier, a reviewer for the Horn Book Magazine and co-author, with Susan Bloom, of Presenting Avi (1997). Previous directors include Susan Bloom, Gregory Maguire, and Barbara Harrison.
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Leon Botstein is a Swiss-American conductor, educator, and scholar serving as the President of Bard College.
Gregory Maguire is an American novelist. He is the author of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, and several dozen other novels for adults and children. Many of Maguire's adult novels are inspired by classic children's stories; Wicked transforms the Wicked Witch of the West from L. Frank Baum's 1900 book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its 1939 film adaptation into the misunderstood green-skinned Elphaba Thropp. The blockbuster 2003 Broadway musical Wicked was inspired by Maguire's first novel for adults. Written by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman, the musical is currently Broadway's fifth longest-running show, and at its peak nine companies ran simultaneously around the world.
Douglass Residential College, part of Rutgers University-New Brunswick, is an undergraduate, non degree granting higher education program of Rutgers University-New Brunswick that is specifically for women. It succeeded the liberal arts degree-granting Douglass College after it was merged with the other undergraduate liberal arts colleges at Rutgers-New Brunswick to form the School of Arts and Sciences in 2007. Originally named the New Jersey College for Women when founded in 1918 as a degree granting college, it was renamed Douglass College in 1955 in honor of its first dean. Now called Douglass Residential College, it is no longer a degree granting unit of Rutgers, but is a supplementary program that female undergraduate students attending the Rutgers-New Brunswick undergraduate schools may choose to join. Female students enrolled at any of the academic undergraduate schools at Rutgers–New Brunswick, including, e.g., the School of Arts and Sciences, School of Engineering, School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, School of Pharmacy, Mason Gross School of the Arts, may now also enroll in Douglass Residential College, which offers special enrichment and career preparation experiences, special projects, and educational and service travel, and at which they must satisfy additional requirements specific to the college. Douglass seeks to provide the benefits of a close-knit small community of women students and offers programs specially designed to help women students to identify their unique abilities and develop confidence. These programs include, for example, a strong emphasis on opportunities to participate in service/learning trips in foreign countries, support for and expansion of racial and cultural diversity, and a wide range of training and enrichment activities offered by a career and leadership development center known as the "BOLD" Center.
Eleanor Frances (Butler) Cameron was a children's author and critic. She published 20 books in her lifetime, including The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet (1954) and its sequels, a collection of critical essays called The Green and Burning Tree (1969), and The Court of the Stone Children (1973), which won the U.S. National Book Award in category Children's Books.
Elizabeth Orton Jones was an American illustrator and writer of children's books. She won the 1945 Caldecott Medal for U.S. picture book illustration, recognizing Prayer for a Child, after being a runner-up one year earlier.
Thomas Anthony "Tomie" dePaola was an American writer and illustrator who created more than 260 children's books, such as Strega Nona. He received the Children's Literature Legacy Award for his lifetime contribution to American children's literature in 2011.
Nancy Barbara Bond is an American author of children's literature. In 1977 her first book, A String in the Harp, was fantasy novel with an element of folklore, set in West Wales. It received a Newbery honor and the Welsh Tir na n-Og Award, and remains in print.
Anne Carroll Moore was an American educator, writer and advocate for children's libraries.
Jacqueline Woodson is an American writer of books for children and adolescents. She is best known for Miracle's Boys, and her Newbery Honor-winning titles Brown Girl Dreaming, After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way. After serving as the Young People's Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, she was named the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, by the Library of Congress, for 2018–19. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2020.
Bertha Mahony (1882–1969), also known as Bertha Mahony Miller, is considered a figurehead of the children's literature movement. She created one of the first children's bookstores in Boston, Massachusetts. Mahony was also the founder of the Horn Book Magazine. Besides being the oldest magazine of its kind in America, Horn Book remains one of the most well-known arbiters of excellence in children's publishing. Mahony was also responsible for the creation of the Horn Book, Inc. publishing company.
Barbara T. Christian was an American author and professor of African-American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Among several books, and over 100 published articles, Christian was most well known for the 1980 study Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition.
Nikki Grimes is an American author of books written for children and young adults, as well as a poet and journalist.
Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA) is a private graduate-level art school in Montpelier, Vermont. It offers Master's degrees in low-residency and residential programs. Its faculty includes Pulitzer Prize finalists, National Book Award winners, Newbery Medal honorees, Guggenheim Fellowship and Fulbright Program fellows, and Ford Foundation grant recipients. The literary magazine Hunger Mountain is operated by VCFA writing faculty and students.
Anita Silvey is an author, editor, and literary critic in the genre of children’s literature. Born in 1947 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Silvey has served as Editor-in-Chief of The Horn Book Magazine and as vice-president at Houghton Mifflin where she oversaw children’s and young adult book publishing. She has also authored a number of critical books about children's literature, including 500 Great Books for Teens and The Essential Guide to Children's Books and Their Creators. In October 2010, she began publishing the Children's Book-A-Day Almanac online, a daily essay on classic and contemporary children's books.
A classic is a book accepted as being exemplary or noteworthy. What makes a book "classic" is a concern that has occurred to various authors ranging from Italo Calvino to Mark Twain and the related questions of "Why Read the Classics?" and "What Is a Classic?" have been essayed by authors from different genres and eras. The ability of a classic book to be reinterpreted, to seemingly be renewed in the interests of generations of readers succeeding its creation, is a theme that is seen in the writings of literary critics including Michael Dirda, Ezra Pound, and Sainte-Beuve. These books can be published as a collection, or presented as a list, such as Harold Bloom's list of books that constitute the Western canon. Although the term is often associated with the Western canon, it can be applied to works of literature from all traditions, such as the Chinese classics or the Indian Vedas.
Simmons University is a private women-focused undergraduate university and co-educational graduate school in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It was established in 1899 by clothing manufacturer John Simmons. In 2018, it reorganized its structure and changed its name to a university.
The Road from Home: A True Story of Courage, Survival, and Hope, earlier titled The Road from Home: The Story of an Armenian Girl, is a non-fiction book written by David Kherdian, originally published in 1979. It is based on the life of the author's mother, Veron Dumehjian (1907-1981), who survived the Armenian genocide. During the deportations, the rest of her immediate family died. She returned to her native town, only to be displaced again by the Greco-Turkish War (1919–22). After settling in Smyrna, she was forced to flee once more due to the Great Fire of Smyrna. Veron escaped to ultimately settle in the United States. The book is widely read by middle school children throughout the U.S. and has been published throughout Europe. It has received a number of prestigious awards.
Locomotive is a 2013 children's book written and illustrated by Brian Floca. A non-fiction book written primarily in free verse, the book follows a family as they ride a transcontinental steam engine train in summer of 1869. The book details the workers, passengers, landscape, and effects of building and operating the first transcontinental railroad. The book also contains prose about the earlier and later history of locomotives. The book took Floca four years to create, which included a change in perspective from following the crew of the train to following a family. Floca conducted extensive research including his own train ride and consultation with experts to ensure he had the details all correct.
Awards presented by the PEN American Center that are no longer active.
