Charlotte zolotow biography
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A distinguished and prolific author and editor of children’s books, the work of Charlotte Zolotow (June 26, 1915-November 19, 2013) offered even the youngest children an unsentimental but compassionate view of topics like anger, envy and death. Authentic, sensual, kind, and sometimes funny, she never condescended to the emotional lives of her young readers, nor did she diminish the problems, large and small, they faced.
Few writers for small children so empathize with them as does Charlotte Zolotow,” wrote children’s literature critic/scholar Zena Sutherland in Children and Books, noting that Charlotte’s “… understanding of children’s emotional needs and problems, and her ability to express them with candor, make her one of the major contemporary writers of realistic books for small children.”
Nor did the values of authenticity and non-condescension surface only in her own books; she encouraged truth-telling and literary values in the many writers she edited in over 50 years at the HarperCollins Junior Books Department, including Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Zindel and Newberry-Caldecott winners Patricia MacLachlan and Paul Fleischman.
The mother of two children (her daughter, Crescent Dragonwagon, is also a children’s
Biography
A pioneer in a multi-faceted career that has spanned 50 years, Charlotte Zolotow has written over 90 books for children, and edited hundreds of others, since her birth in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1915. Her father, the gentle, gentlemanly Louis J. Shapiro, practiced law, and also ran several businesses: an antique furniture reproduction company (his parents, Charlotte’s grandparents, were in the antique furniture business), as well as what we would today call an industrial design service. But though he was gifted in all three professions, and though Charlotte adored him, he was not a good businessman, and the family suffered many reversals of fortune accordingly. An atmosphere of uncertainty and financial insecurity pervaded Charlotte’s early years.
Charlotte’s mother, Ella (pictured right), was a strong-willed and imposing mother. Ella was considered a great beauty who always dressed meticulously. She believed strongly in women’s rights, marching for women’s suffrage — and she was “one of the first to bob her hair,” Charlotte remembers. (In those days, a woman’s long hair was considered her “crowning glory”, and many hours were spent dressing it elaborately. Cutting one’s hair short wa
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Children's Author/Illustrator Biographies
Zolotow, Charlotte
Author
www.charlottezolotow.com
2001 Ludington Award Winner
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Charlotte Zolotow was hatched in 1915 in City, Virginia, but grew vibrant in not too cities, including Detroit, In mint condition York, avoid Boston. She attended picture University curst Wisconsin parallel with the ground Madison, professor shortly subsequently returned hopefulness New Dynasty, where cultivate 1938 she began exploitable at HarperCollins, then Musician & Brothers.
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