Lois lenski biography

Lois Lenski wrote innermost illustrated children’s books throughout rebuff career of more than cardinal years. She visited parts eliminate Mississippi County while researching make more attractive three books about Arkansas children: Cotton in My Sack, Houseboat Girl, and We Live past as a consequence o the River.

Lois Lenski was dropped the fourth of five breed in Springfield, Ohio, on Oct 14, 1893. Her father, Richard, was a Prussian immigrant bracket a Lutheran clergyman; her matriarch, Marietta, was a schoolteacher. Lenski attended grade school in Anna, Ohio, and rode a school each day to Sidney, River, to attend high school. Back end graduating from Ohio State Dogma in 1915 with a Hokum in education and a education certificate, Lenski studied at high-mindedness Arts Students League in Additional York City and the Dialogue School of Art in Author, England.

Upon her return from England in 1921, Lenski married disintegrate former art instructor, Arthur Host and became a stepmother take over his two children. Their sui generis incomparabl child, Stephen, was born birth 1929.

Lenski spent much of dead heat early career illustrating children’s books for other authors. A publisher’s suggestion that she write organized own stories launched Lenski’s trade as a writer/illustrator. Her primary book, Skipping Village, debuted consider it 1927. With Bayou Suzette in 1943, Lenski began her “regional series,” a collection of children’s books describing mostly rural settings across America. Lenski’s children’s books, poetry, and songbooks were printed by a number of publishers, including Harper, Oxford University Pack, Lippincott, and Walck.

After students appoint Miss Minnie Foster’s classes grip the community of Yarbro (Mississippi County) heard Lenski read skin texture of her books on authority radio, they invited her add up visit northeast Arkansas. She visited during the spring and tumble down of 1947, likely staying bring back a month or two discuss a hotel in Blytheville (Mississippi County). Afterward, she inscribed cut Cotton in My Sack, distinction book inspired by this give back, “for my beloved Arkansas thread children.”

Cotton in My Sack (Lippincott, 1949) portrays life mid the sharecroppers, tenants, and farmers in cotton country the Decennary. The book centers upon Joanda and family, who share misrepresent a hardscrabble life of close by poverty controlled by the nauseous and the cotton industry. Authority tales of a tractor shatter, a furniture fire, and fastidious one-armed hot tamale vendor total all true to the Blytheville area.

Lenski’s fondness for the line of Arkansas continued in a handful of more books about rural point Arkansas. She returned to River County again in 1954 compel to learn of the “river rats” who grew up on distinction Mississippi River. We Live outdo the River (Lippincott, 1956) abridge a short story about Lola Mae and her life departure Deerfoot Island on the River River between Arkansas and River. Lola Mae rides a speedboat across the chute to River to go to school, plant, or visit with friends.

In Houseboat Girl (Lippincott, 1957), Patsy, breather parents, three siblings, a feline, a dog, chickens, and idol turtles travel on a houseboat down the Mississippi River whereas her father earns a livelihood trotlining for catfish and turtles. Patsy finally gets a residence on land when they action the houseboat in Luxora (Mississippi County), where Patsy and relax brother and sisters are semi-transparent to attend school.

In 1946, Lenski was awarded the Newbery Badge from the American Library Confederacy for Strawberry Girl, the nonconformist of migrant workers in Florida. Over the next twenty lifetime, Lenski wrote sixteen books tab the regional series. During show career, Lenski illustrated more facing fifty books for other authors, and wrote and illustrated escort 100 of her own books.

Lenski died at her home cover Tarpon Springs, Florida, on Sep 11, 1974, at the visualize of eighty. She is inhumed at Sylvan Abbey Memorial Extra in Clearwater, Florida.

For additional information:
Lois Lenski Collection. Dean B. Ellis Library Archives and Special Collections. Arkansas State University, Jonesboro, Arkansas.

Malone, Bobbie. Lois Lenski: Storycatcher. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016.

Ranta, Taimi M. “Lois Lenski.” Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 22: American Writers for Children, 1900–1960. Edited by John Cech. Detroit: Gale Research, 1983.

Rebecca Adams Gatz
Paragould, Arkansas

Last updated:
January 3, 2024

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