56°
Jean Guttery Fritz, who lives in Dobbs Ferry, turns 100 on Monday.
Fritz, a children's writer best known for American biography and history, was born Nov. 16, 1915 in Hankou (now Wuhan), China. She won the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award in 1986 for her career contribution to American children's literature. Fritz's writing career started in the early 50s with the publication of several short stories in Humpty Dumpty magazine. Her first book was published in 1954, "Bunny Hopwell's First Spring," followed in 1955 by "121 Pudding Street," a work based on her own children. Her first historical novel for children was "The Cabin Faced West" in 1958.
Fritz' autobiography, "Homesick, My Own Story" from 1982 won a National Book Award for Young People's Literature in the children's fiction category and was a runner-up for the Newbery Medal. The latter American Library Association award recognizes the year's best American children's book but almost always goes to fiction. Later, Fritz won two annual Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards for children's nonfiction. In 1986 she received the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal from the ALA, which recognizes a living author or illustrator whose books, published in the United States, have made "a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children".
Click here to follow Daily Voice Rivertowns and receive free news updates.
