Marguerite Henry

One of my favorite authors is Marguerite Henry. I like her works because they are educational and most are based on true stories. Also, I love horses. Her works include: Album of Horses, Black Gold, Born to Trot, Brighty of the Grand Canyon, Brown Sunshine of Sawdust Valley, 5 o' clock Charlie, Justin Morgan Had a Horse, and the Misty of Chincoteague series.        

 Marguerite Henry was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on April 12, 1902 to Anna and Louis Brithaupt.  Marguerite was the youngest of her five siblings. Mr. Brithaupt was a well respected publisher. When she was six, she was diagnosed with rheumatic fever. As her seventh Christmas present, her Father gave her a red table and writing supplies. Until she was eleven which was when she recovered from the rheumatic fever she spent a lot of her time writing on her table. Her first published story was called "Hide-and-Seek in Autumn Leaves". Later in Marguerite Henry's life she said ,"At last I had a world of my very own -- a writing world, and soon it would be populated by all the creatures of my imagination." Marguerite loved to read and got a job at the local library mending books. Ever since a young age she had always wanted to be a writer but deiced that it was not a practical career. She Graduated the Milwaukee State Teachers College and became an English teacher. During the summers Marguerite and her sisters went on a trip to a fishing camp. There she met Sidney Crocker Henry her future husband. Later, Marguerite and Sidney got married on May 5, 1923. 

During their sixty-four years that they were married, they didn't have any children instead they had numerous pets. Marguerite wrote her first children's book called Auno and Tauno it was about her friends stories about their native country, Finland. When she had finished writing Justin Morgan Had a Horse, she wanted to get it illustrated. She said,” I had just finished writing Justin Morgan Had a Horse, and wanted the best horse artist in the world to illustrate it. So I went to the library, studied the horse books, and immediately fell in love with the work of Will James and Wesley Dennis. When I found out that Will James was dead, I sent my manuscript to Wesley Dennis."  In 1945 Justin Morgan Had a Horse was published. Over all Wesley Dennis illustrated fifteen of her books. Sadly, her husband died in 1987. Just after she published Brown Sunshine of Sawdust Valley, she passed away on November 26, 1997 at her home in Rancho Santa Fe, California. Overall she had written fifty-eight books. 

Helpful websites I used are http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marguerite_Henry

Also I used http://www.yourlibrary.ws/childrens_webpage/j-author42001.html

           Thanks for reading 

          

The picture of Marguerite Henry with the horse is taken from this website.     http://horsesforliteracy.com/about/

The picture of Marguerite Henry is taken from this website. http://www.yourlibrary.ws/childrens_webpage/j-author42001.html0 

Walter Farley

Mr. Walter Farley 

I haven't done many posts about books so I've decided to do a book post today. But it was really hard to pick a book so I'm going to do a series of posts on favorite authors instead. My favorite authors are Walter Farley, Jean Craighead George, Will James, Ralph Moody, and Robert Lawson. Since I like them all for different reason I am going to put a biography and my favorite books written by each author.

First is Walter Farley, He was born on June 26, 1915 in Syracuse, New York to Walter and Isabelle Farley. The Farley family lived in Manhattan, New York along with there newest son,William who was 2 years younger than Walter. His father worked as a assistant manager in a fancy hotel called the Roosevelt Hotel which is described as one of the classiest hotels in New York. Walter's love for horses started ever since he was a little kid. He once said that "My greatest love was, and still is, horses. I wanted a pony as much as any boy or girl could possibly want anything—but I never owned one. I tried selling subscriptions to win a pony, which was offered as a prize to the kid who sold the most subscriptions. Then my uncle with a flock of show horses and jumpers moved from the West Coast to Syracuse, and I was deliriously happy. I was at the stables every chance I could get.” *     

Walter started writing The Black Stallion when he was in High School and Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania. When the book was completed and published in 1941, he was an undergraduate at Columbia University. When he had finished school he went to work as a advertising copywriter in New York. Later he joined the United States Army and served in a tank with the Fourth Armored Division. During the war he met Rosemary Lutz whom he married. When he was discharged he and Rosemary decided to trasvel abroad. After that, the young Farley family purchased a horse farm in Earlville Pennsylvania. Once they had bought the farm they had four children Steve, Tim, Pamela, and Alice.Walter started writing other children books and the sequels to the Black Stallion. The Farley family also had a place in Florida where they would stay during part of the year. Walter Farley died of cancer in October 1989, after a television show came out called the Adventures of the Black Stallion.  He wrote 21 sequels to the The Black Stallion plus several other books. His son Steve helped the series.

I would give The Black Stallion ten stars out of ten because I really enjoyed it and had a great time reading it.

* Quote taken from here .

To learn more here are a  few sites I used.

http://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/bios/Farley__Walter.html 

http://www.newreleasetuesday.com/authordetail.php?aut_id=192

http://www.theweeweb.co.uk/public/author_profile.php?id=710