Bob Falls, who founded the wondrous company, POETRY ALIVE, in 1984, and forever-friend, wrote me about a quote he found about Laura Ingalls Wilder who has been in the literary news of late. I was referenced in Caroline Fraser’s Pulitzer Prize winning, PRAIRIE FIRES: THE AMERICAN DREAMS OF LAURA INGALLS WILDER, as well as in William T. Anderson’s THE LITERARY APPRENTICESHIP OF LAURA INGALLS WILDER (“South Dakota History, v 13, #4). In 1969, I wrote

Click to watch my appearance on Living the Florida Life, hosted on YouTube.  

In the early l990’s, a very exciting group had formed, The Children’s Literature Council of Pennsylvania. In l992, I wrote to Seven Herb, then president of the association, asking if the Council might sponsor The Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award to further promote the genre in a different way since the NCTE Award was being given to a poet for their aggregate body of work every three years. The award I would establish would be

In November, Marilyn Nelson will be the l9th recipient of the prestigous National Council of Teachers of English Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children. In the late l970’s when the Award was being discussed, I served on the NCTE Board of Directors. Both Bernice (Bee) Cullinan and I were very active in all aspects of NCTE. It was Bee who proposed the Award to honor her son, Jonathan Paul (1969-1975), who at six years

At the height of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich days, Nancy received the John Newbery Medal for A VISIT TO WILLIAM BLAKE’S INN: POEMS FOR INNOCENT AND EXPERIENCED TRAVELERS, the first book of poetry to receive a Newbery. The medal was given on June l2, 1982 in Philadelphia. Nancy and I knew one another long before this date. We traveled together, she wrote original poems for my anthologies, we visited often, I spoke to her classes at