Armstrong Sperry

Infobox Writer
name = Armstrong Wells Sperry


imagesize = 200px
caption =
pseudonym =
birthname =
birthdate = November 7 , 1897
birthplace = New Haven, Connecticut
deathdate = April 26, 1976
deathplace = Hanover, New Hampshire
occupation = writer and illustrator
nationality = American flagicon|United States
period = 20th century
genre = Children's literature
subject =
movement =
notableworks =
spouse = Margaret Robertson, M.D.
partner =
children = Susan, John
relatives =
influences = Herman Melville, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London, Frederick O'Brien
influenced =


website = http://www.ogram.org/sperry

Armstrong Wells Sperry (November 7, 1897 - April 26, 1976) was an American writer and illustrator of children's literature. His books include historical fiction and biography, often set on sailing ships, and stories of boys from Polynesia, Asia and indigenous American cultures. He is best known for his 1941 Newbery Medal-winning book "Call It Courage".

The Early Training as an Artist

Born the third and youngest son of a businessman in New Haven, Sperry attended Stamford Preparatory School from 1908 to 1915. His older brother, Paul, invented the sole of the Sperry Top-Sider. He attended the Art Students League of New York from 1915 to 1918, where he studied with F. Luis Mora and George Bellows. He then studied at the Yale School of Art in the fall of 1918 until drafted into the United States Navy at the very end of World War I.

Inspired by reading the work of Herman Melville, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Jack London as a boy, and then Frederick O'Brien's [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14384/14384-h/14384-h.htm "White Shadows in the South Seas"] in 1919, he traveled around the South Pacific from October 1920 to May 1921, spending time on Tahiti, Raiatea, Bora Bora, New Zealand, Australia, the Fiji Islands & Hawai'i. In December 1921, his paintings of the South Seas were exhibited at the Art Centre, NYC. ["Art: The December Exhibitions", December 18, 1921, The New York Times]

In the summer of 1922, he was introduced to Kenneth Emory, an ethnologist at the Bishop Museum, Honolulu, by his foster sister, Anne Kinnear. [Krauss, Bob. "Keneti: South Seas Adventures of Kenneth Emory." University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1988] He spent the spring of 1923 studying at the Académie Colarossi in Paris, and continued to enroll at the Art Students League during the 1920's and early 1930s.

From September 1924 to May 1925, he was employed as an assistant to Emory on board the Kaimiloa, a yacht owned by Medford Kellum, sailing from Hawai'i to Fanning Island, Christmas Island, Malden Island, Penrhyn Island, Tahiti, Bora Bora & Raiatea on scientific research, although continuing to paint, exhibiting his work in Honolulu. ["Armstrong Sperry Has Prisoned the Elusive Atmosphere of the South Seas in Water Colors," by L. T. G. "The Honolulu Advertiser", Sunday Morning, July 12, 1925] before sailing to San Francisco in June 1925 [Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at San Francisco, 1893-1953]

Returning to New York, he married Margaret Robertson, a medical doctor and daughter of San Francisco bookseller and publisher A.M. Robertson, in 1930. He worked in an advertising agency, "drawing vacuum cleaners, milk bottles, Campbell's Soup, etc.," ["Armstrong Sperry, 1940 Newbery Winner," by Doris S. Patee, Editor, Juvenile Books, Macmillan Company, New York, N.Y. "The Library Journal", July 1941, Vol. 66, pp. 589-590] as an illustrator of pulp romances and magazines, writing south sea yarns for magazines, and finally, illustrating books and dust jackets, including the first edition of "Tarzan and the Lost Empire" by Edgar Rice Burroughs [Robert R. Barrett, "To Bora-Bora and Back Again:The Story of Armstrong W. Sperry." "Burroughs Bulletin", Number 11 (New Series), July 1992, pp. 3-8] in 1929 and the first of several books he would illustrate by Helen Follet, "Magic Portholes" in 1932.

From Illustrator to Award-Winning Writer

Sperry's first book, "One Day with Manu," a colorfully illustrated tale of everyday life in Bora Bora, appeared in 1933. Critic Joan McGrath, cautions modern readers to take his depictions of other cultures in context, stating,

"His early work, such as the tales of Manu, Jambi, and Tuktu, are unlikely to be found in library collections of today, in an era rendered more sensitive to the feelings of minority cultures and racial pride than in the 1930's. Coloured as they were by the prevailing attitudes of his day, Sperry's ethnological works for young readers would by critics of today be stigmatized as condescending in their approach: it is all too easy to lose the historical perspective that would credit him with enlightenment and objectivity, given their date of publication." ["Twentieth Century Children's Writers", Palgrave Macmillan, 1985, pp. 722-723]

Sperry's great-grandfather was a sea captain, inspiring his love of the ocean and his book "All Sail Set" about the clipper ship "The Flying Cloud," which won him a Newbery Honor Book award in 1936. Although settled in New Canaan, CT, in 1934, Sperry and his family lived Santa Fe, New Mexico for a year, inspiring several books, including "Wagons Westward: The Story of the Old Trail to Santa Fe" in 1936 and "Little Eagle, a Navaho Boy" in 1938.

might be too adult for children, but the reception of this book has reaffirmed a belief I have long held: that children have imagination enough to grasp any idea, and respond to it, if it is put to them honestly and without a patronizing pat on the head." [from "Acceptance Paper" by Armstrong Sperry, as appeared in Newbery Medal Books: 1922-1955, Bartha Mohoney Miller and Elinor Whitney Field, eds., Horn Book, Boston, 1955, p. 207]

Sperry purchased a farm in Thetford Center, VT in the late 1930s, and then moved to Hanover, NH at the beginning of World War II. In 1944, he won the New York Herald Tribune Children's Spring Book Festival Award for "Storm Canvas", a story of a boy on the U.S. frigate Thunderbolt in 1814, and in 1949, he won the Boys' Clubs of America Junior Book Award for the 1947 publication of "The Rain Forest". [Obituary, The New York Times, April 30, 1976]

Although established as a writer, Sperry continued to illustrate dustjackets for other well-known authors of young adult fiction of his era, including Howard Pease, Agnes D. Hewes, Florence C. Means, and Hildegarde Hawthorne, as well as illustrating various basal readers for the Ginn Co. In 1951, he illustrated an adaptation by Allen Chaffee of Longfellow's "Story of Hiawatha."

In 1942, he published his only novel for adult readers, "No Brighter Glory," about the Astor family.

Later Years

Random House's Landmark Series began in 1950 with Sperry's "The Voyages of Christopher Columbus" as the first title. Sperry would also write "John Paul Jones, Fighting Sailor" (1953) and "Captain Cook Explores the South Seas" (1955) for the Landmark Series, as well as two titles in Random House's All About series, "All about the Jungle" (1957) and "All about the Arctic and Antarctic" (1959).

His final book, "Great River, Wide Land: The Rio Grande Through History" appeared in 1967.

In April 1974, a television adaption by Ben Masselink of "Call It Courage", shot entirely on location on Bora Bora with a cast of local actors, was aired on NBC's "The Wonderful World of Disney," narrated by Don Ho.

Sperry died on April 26, 1976, in Hanover, NH, having published twenty-nine books and illustrated dozens more. Sperry is buried in Thetford Center, VT. [Obituary, The New York Times, April 28, 1976]

Titles in print

In addition to "Call It Courage," which has been in print continuously since first published in 1940 and translated into several dozen languages, "All Sail Set" and "Wagons Westward" were reissued in 1984 and 2001 respectively by David R. Godine, and "John Paul Jones, Fighting Sailor" was reissued in 2006 as "John Paul Jones, The Pirate Patriot" by Sterling Point Books.

* "Call It Courage" ISBN 978-1416953685
* "All Sail Set" ISBN 978-0879235239
* "Wagons Westward" ISBN 978-1567921281
* "John Paul Jones, The Pirate Patriot" ISBN 978-1402736155

References

See also:
* [http://www.lib.usm.edu/~degrum/html/research/findaids/DG0923f.html deGrummond Children's Literature Collection at The University of Southern Mississippi]
* [http://www.ogram.org/sperry/papers/UMN-CLRC.shtml Kerlan Collection, University of Minnesota Children's Literature Research Collection]