Children's Literature Festival
Lita Judge, from Peterborough, NH, created Owl #99 for our collection. Lita is both an author and an illustrator. Some of her titles include D Is For Dinosaurs, S Is For S'mores, Ugly, and Mog, The Third Warthog. Coming out Spring 2009 are Pennies For Elephants and Yellowstone Moran. We are so pleased to have as part of our Festival collection work from Lita's book, One Thousand Tracings, Healing The Wounds Of World War II, based on the efforts of her grandparents during WWII. In October 2008 Lita was honored at the United Nations for this book.
Beth Krommes also from Peterborough, NH, is the illustrator of many books, including The House in The Night, for which she was awarded the 2009 Caldecott Award. Other works include Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow, Grandmother Winter, The Hidden Folk: Stories Of Fairies, Dwarves, Selkies, and Other Secret Beings, and The Sun in Me: Poems about The Planet. Beth created one of our Festival owls. In addition, she is represented in our Gallery Collection by work from her award winning book The Lamp, the Ice, and the Boat Called Fish.
Lois Lowry, of Cambridge, MA and NH, has won the Newbery Award twice for her novels Number The Stars and The Giver. The companion books for The Giver are Gathering Blue and Messenger. She was a recipient of the Keene State College Children's Literature Festival Award that recognized excellence and diversity in the body of her work. She has authored both picture story books and novels. Her novel Gossamer was turned into a play and performed in Portland, OR and Milwaukee. Other works include the Anastasia Krupnik series, The Silent Boy, The Willoughbys, and the Gooney Bird books.
Katherine Paterson of Barre, VT, is also a two-time winner of the Newbery Award for Bridge To Terabithia and Jacob Have I Loved. She also was a recipient of the Keene State College Children's Literature Festival Award that recognized excellence and diversity in the body of her work. Katherine has authored: retellings such as The Tale Of The Mandarin Ducks; picture story books such as Blueberries For The Queen and The Wide-Awake Princess; and novels such as Lyddie, Jip, His Story, The Great Gilly Hopkins, Come Sing, Jimmy Jo, and The Master Puppeteer.
Jane Yolen, is no stranger to KSC. She has spoken at a number of our Festivals and was also a recipient of the Keene State College Children's Literature Festival Award that recognized excellence and diversity in the body of her work. She is the author of over 200 children's books, a poet, teacher of writing and literature, and has been called the Hans Christian Andersen of America. Some of her many loved works include The Ballad Of The Pirate Queens, Birdwatch, The dinosaur books illustrated by Mark Teague, Owl Moon, The Devil's Arithmetic, Dragon's Blood, and The Gift Of Sarah Barker. For our 15th Festival she wrote a poem "Pilgrimage: Keene State."