Karen Hesse

Karen Hesse (1952 - ) is an American author of children's literature and literature for young adults, often with historical settings. Her novel "Out of the Dust" was the winner of the 1998 Newbery Medal and the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction. In 2002, Hesse was a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship.

Life

Karen Hesse was born August 29, 1952, in Baltimore, Maryland. She studied theatre at Towson State College, and married Randy Hesse in 1971 before completing her studies. [ [http://www.edupaperback.org/showauth.cfm?authid=56 EPA biography] ] She finished her undergraduate degree at the University of Maryland in English, Psychology, and Anthropology [ [http://www.kidsreads.com/authors/au-hesse-karen.asp KidsReads biography] ] , during which she began writing poetry. After graduating, she moved with her husband to Brattleboro, Vermont, had two children, took jobs in publishing, and started writing children's books. Her first novel was a rejected story about meeting Bigfoot, but her next proposal became the novel "Wish on a Unicorn". [ [http://www.edupaperback.org/showauth.cfm?authid=56 EPA biography] ]

Notes

Works

*1991 "Wish on a Unicorn"
*1992 "Letters From Rifka"
*1993 "Lester's Dog"
*1993 "Poppy's Chair"
*1994 " Phoenix Rising "
*1995 "Lavender"
*1996 "The Music of Dolphins"
*1997 "Out of the Dust"
*1997 "A Time of Angels"
*1998 "Just Juice"
*1998 "Sable"
*1999 "A Light in the Storm: the Civil War Diary of Amelia Martin "
*2000 "Stowaway"
*2001 " Witness"
*2003 "Aleutian Sparrow"
*2003 "The Stone Lamp: Eight Stories Of Hanukkah Through History" (with Brian Pinkney}
*2004 "The Cats in Krasinski Square"
*2005 "The Young Hans Christian Andersen"
*2008 "Spuds"
*2008 "Brooklyn Bridge"

*"Out of the Dust" is a story of a girl living through the dust bowl of the depression. The central character accidentally injures her pregnant mother by throwing a bucket of flaming kerosene on her. After the mother dies, Billie Jo and her father try continue with their lives.
*Hesse tackled a more disturbing subject in her book "Witness". Here, the newly invigorated Klan of the 1920s (in this book, 1924 and '25) tries to take over a small Vermont town. The book is written from the perspectives of several people- Merlin Van Tornhout and Johnny Reeves, both member of the Ku Klux Klan, Sara Chickering, a farmer, Esther Hirsh, a six-year-old Jewish girl, Leonora Sutter, an African American girl, Iris Weaver, a resteraunteur, Harvey and Viola Pettibone, who are shop owners, Reynard Alexander, a newspaper editor, Fitzgerald Flitt, the doctor, and Percelle Johnson, the town constable. In "Witness" Hesse continues the distinctive poetic/prose style she pioneered in "Out of the Dust."
*She also wrote "The Music of Dolphins", about a girl who was raised by dolphins, and
*"Stowaway", based on the true story of an 11-year-old boy who stowed away on Captain James Cook's ship "Endeavour" in 1768.
*"Brooklyn Bridge" is based on the true story of the family that created the teddy bear in Brooklyn in 1903.

External links

* [http://us.macmillan.com/author/karenhesse Karen Hesse's page on Macmillan.com]
* [http://www.kidsreads.com/authors/au-hesse-karen.asp Autobiography and interview with Karen Hesse]
* [http://content.scholastic.com/browse/contributor.jsp?id=3214&FullBreadCrumb=%3Ca+href%3D%22%2Fbrowse%2Fsearch.jsp%3Fquery%3Dkaren+hesse%26c1%3DCONTENT30%26c2%3Dfalse%22%3EAll+Results+%3C%2Fa%3E Scholastic biography]