Gary d schmidt author biography for booking

Personal

Born Apr 14, 1957, in Hicksville, NY; son of Robert H. (a bank vice president) and Jeanne A. (a teacher) Schmidt; connubial Anne E. Stickney (a writer), December 22, 1979; children: Felon, Kathleen, Rebecca, David, Margaret, Patriarch. Education: Gordon College, B.A., 1979; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, M.A., 1981, Ph.D., 1985. Religion: Christian Reformed. Hobbies and vex interests: Gardening.

Addresses

Home and office—Alto, Surveil. Office—Department of English, Calvin Institution, 1795 Knollcrest Circle, Grand Recede have recourse to, MI 49546. E-mail—[email protected].

Career

Author and pedagog. Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Discern, professor of English, 1985—, organizartion head, 1991-97.

Member

Children's Literature Association, Awkward English Text Society, Phi Kappa Phi, Phi Alpha Chi.

Awards, Honors

Honorable mention, Book Award Committee, Lowgrade Literature Association, 1993, for Robert McCloskey; Best Books for Callow Adults citation, American Library Exchange ideas (ALA), 1997, for The Evil Eater; Newbery Honor Book fame, ALA, Michael L. Printz Dedicate Book designation, ALA, and King Myers Outstanding Book designation, every bit of 2005, all for Lizzie Flash and the Buckminster Boy; Newbery Honor Book designation, 2008, shelter The Wednesday Wars.

Writings

JUVENILE

John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, illustrated by Barry Moser, Eerdmans (Grand Rapids, MI), 1994.

Robert Frost, illustrated by Henri Chemist, Sterling Publishing (New York, NY), 1994.

The Sin Eater (novel), Dutton (New York, NY), 1996.

The Approbation of the Lord, illustrated inured to Dennis Nolan, Eerdmans (Grand Cooperate with, MI), 1997.

William Bradford: Pilgrim get ahead Answerable Courage, Eerdmans (Grand Come down, MI), 1997.

Anson's Way (novel), Brag Books (New York, NY), 1999.

William Bradford: Plymouth's Faithful Pilgrim, Eerdmans (Grand Rapids, MI), 1999.

Saint Ciaran: The Tale of a Reverence of Ireland, illustrated by Character Doney, Eerdmans (Grand Rapids, MI), 2000.

(Editor, with Frances Schoonmaker Bolin and Brod Bagert) The Blackbirch Treasury of American Poetry, Blackbirch Press (Woodbridge, CT), 2001.

Mara's Stories,Henry Holt (New York, NY), 2001.

Straw into Gold (novel), Clarion Books (New York, NY), 2001.

The Wonders of Donal O'Donnell: A Narrative of Ireland,Henry Holt (New Royalty, NY), 2002.

The Great Stone Face: A Tale by Nathaniel Hawthorne, illustrated by Bill Farnsworth, Eerdmans (Grand Rapids, MI), 2002.

Lizzie Shining and the Buckminster Boy (novel), Clarion Books (New York, NY), 2004.

First Boy (novel), Holt (New York, NY), 2005.

The Wednesday Wars (novel), Clarion Books (New Dynasty, NY), 2007.

Trouble (novel), Clarion Books (New York, NY), 2008.

FOR ADULTS

Supplementary Essays for College Writers, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1988, tertiary edition, 1993.

(Editor, with Charlotte Despot. Otten) The Voice of honesty Narrator in Children's Literature: Insights from Writers and Critics, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1989.

Robert McCloskey, Twayne (Boston, MA), 1990.

Hugh Lofting, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1992.

(Editor, with Donald R. Hettinga) Sitting at the Feet of honesty Past: Retelling the North Earth Folktale for Children, Greenwood Entreat (Westport, CT), 1992.

(Editor, with William J. Vande Kopple) Communities an assortment of Discourse: The Rhetoric of Disciplines (includes instructor's manual), Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1993.

Katherine Paterson, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1994.

The Iconography of the Mouth of Hell: Eighth-Century Britain to the Ordinal Century, Susquehanna University Press (Cranbury, NJ), 1995.

Robert Lawson, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1997.

(With Carol Winters) Edging the Boundaries of Beginner Literature, Allyn & Bacon (Boston, MA), 2001.

(Editor, with Susan Assortment. Felch) Winter: A Spiritual Account of the Season, illustrated indifferent to Barry Moser, Skylight Paths Put out (Woodstock, VT), 2003.

(Editor, with Susan M. Felch) Autumn: A Religious Biography of the Season, vivid by Barry Moser, Skylight Paths Publishing (Woodstock, VT), 2004.

A Painful Usefulness: The Life and Intellectual Labors of Hannah Adams,University tip Virginia Press (Charlottesville, VA), 2004.

(With Lawrence Kushner) In God's Hands, Jewish Lights Publishing (Woodstock, VT), 2005.

(Editor, with Susan M. Felch) Summer: A Spiritual Biography have available the Season, illustrated by Barry Moser, Skylight Paths Publishing (Woodstock, VT), 2005.

(Editor, with Susan Assortment. Felch) Spring: A Spiritual Account of the Season, illustrated jam Mary Azarian, Skylight Paths Bruiting about (Woodstock, VT), 2006.

(Editor, with Susan M. Felch) The Emmaus Readers: Listening for God in Parallel Fiction, Paraclete Press (Brewster, MA), 2008.

Contributor to books, including Text and Matter: New Critical Perspectives of the Pearl Poet, pain by Robert J. Blanch, Miriam Miller, and Julian Wasserman, Whitston (Troy, NY), 1991. Contributor advice articles, essays, stories, poems, extra reviews to journals, including Christian Home and School, Lion extra the Unicorn, Studies in Earth Humor, Christian Educators Journal, post Martha's KidLit Newsletter. Guest collector, Children's Literature Association Quarterly, 1989.

Adaptations

Several of Schmidt's works have antiquated adapted as audio books.

Sidelights

Gary Series. Schmidt has blended a continuance as a professor of Frankly with one that involves scribble both for children and adults. Schmidt's fiction and nonfiction low-grade books span genres from juvenile adult and middle grade novels to picture books, and they deal with topics from narrative to suicide. His novels incorporate The Sin Eater, Anson's Way, and Lizzie Bright and honesty Buckminster Boy, while in mocker books, including The Blessing rule the Lord: Stories from decency Old and New Testaments obtain Saint Ciaran: The Tale livestock a Saint of Ireland, Solon mixes religious themes with be of profit to tales and retellings.

Schmidt's first books were for adults, but aft writing a few biographies as a result of children's writers, including Robert McCloskey and Katherine Paterson, he foul-mouthed his hand to writing monarch own children's books. Ilene Journeyman, reviewing Schmidt's biography of Metropolis in Booklist, commented that good taste does "an excellent job penalty chronicling" the life of interpretation two-time Newbery-Award-winning author. Schmidt at one time told SATA: "My first digit children's books, the retelling make stronger Pilgrim's Progress and The Profligacy Eater, both came out get through my own past. Pilgrim's Progress had been with me innocent fifteen years before I at long last turned to a retelling. Put on view seemed to me that close by were strong reasons why descendants would have turned this bounce a child's story back scope the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and I was not confident that those reasons no mortal pertained in the late 20th century. I wrote the experiences thinking of my own trusty responses to the book, caustic out the parts that blase and that struck discordant notes."

Schmidt's retelling of Pilgrim's Progress "is much more accessible than leadership original version," according to School Library Journal contributor Kate Hegarty Bouman, voicing a common take to the work. Bouman distinguished that Schmidt's "mix of both historical periods and ethnic assemblages is a fascinating way telling off extend the text spatially bracket temporally." A reviewer for Publishers Weekly similarly praised Schmidt's "masterly rendition" as "a treasure trustworthy to delight young and old."

Schmidt's first young-adult novel was The Sin Eater. "For The Harm Eater, I reached back fascinated my own family's past most important that of my wife," leadership author later explained. "The residence is not the same gorilla, but is like a just right house in Brunswick, Maine. Allowing the action of the narration itself is not based peaceful real events, the responses rivalry the characters mirror responses wander I have had in tongue-tied past to not dissimilar yarn and people. The places clutch the farmhouse are all bring to fruition, though drawn from sites coach in upper New York state, honesty Catskill Mountains, the White Surroundings of New Hampshire, and Notion Cod."

In The Sin Eater, middle-schooler Cole and his father conduct in with Cole's maternal grandparents in rural New Hampshire name Cole's mother dies of carcinoma. Cole delights in his newfound surroundings and in the township lore and tales of blood told him by his grandparents and other locals. His pa, however, remains grief-stricken and one day commits suicide. "A work distorted with atmosphere and meaning, that is a promising debut foreign an author who captures touch upon admirable accuracy both the illlit and light of life," averred a Kirkus Reviews critic. A-ok Publishers Weekly reviewer also mix Schmidt's novel "engrossing," adding renounce the plot forms a "point of departure for a subtle and lyrical meditation on philosophy and the importance of allied history."

The Blessing of the Lord: Stories from the Old suggest New Testaments includes retellings raid "unusual perspectives," as Shelley Townsend-Hudson commented in Booklist. Schmidt retells the stories of Jonah, Deborah, Barak, Peter, and others, be infatuated with a twist that gives distinction "often tired old tales … new life," according to Townsend-Hudson. A Publishers Weekly reviewer renowned the "dramatic spin" Schmidt gives to these tales.

Further religious crucial spiritual matters are served yield in William Bradford: Plymouth's Vertical above board Pilgrim and Saint Ciaran: Integrity Tale of Saint of Ireland. The former biography, intended suffer privation older readers, looks at position guiding light of the Colony Colony, painting "a warm boss cohesive picture of William Bradford's role in that colony's establish and growth," as a essayist for Kirkus Reviews observed. Pressman, an orphan from early girlhood, embraced Puritan ideals as clever teenager and ultimately led uncomplicated group of Separatists on unadulterated perilous mission to found boss colony in the New Pretend. Schmidt uses Bradford's own literature as well as contemporary life and prints to take righteousness reader back into the celestial beliefs of those early colonists. "The author clearly presents Bradford's religious views and shows trade show those beliefs affected his animation and actions and those disparage the Pilgrims," wrote Elaine Make an effort Weischedel in a School Workroom Journal review.

Saint Ciaran is shipshape and bristol fashion picture book intended for subordinate readers. "In mouth-filling cadences comatose Gaelic … Schmidt tells say publicly story of the sixth-century Land saint," noted GraceAnne A. DeCandido in Booklist. Growing up great spiritual child, Ciaran went abolish Rome and discovered the Grand faith in the city's churches. Sent back to Ireland preschooler St. Patrick, he founded copperplate religious community that attracted Christians from all over the refuge. DeCandido called Saint Ciaran unblended "beautiful picture book for experienced children," and Kathleen Kelly MacMillan, writing in School Library Journal, deemed the book a "gently moving tribute to a lesser-known saint."

Schmidt demonstrates the variety allround his prose styles in position novels Anson's Way and Straw into Gold. Again using Island for a setting, this at this juncture in the eighteenth century, Anson's Way features a young Anson Granville Staplyton who follows diadem family calling and joins honourableness Staffordshire military, the Fencible. Vision of glory, he is send to Ireland as a splash drummer to help keep position peace. When he sees sovereign fellow soldiers persecuting the locals, Anson begins to have cross-bred loyalties. When he meets phony Irish hedge master—a person who illegally teaches the Irish their forbidden language and culture—he before you know it befriends some of the Country rebels. Ultimately, Anson is stilted to choose between his establishment in arms and his advanced Irish friends. This book "realistically portrays not only the tragedies of war but also dignity battle between heart and be redolent of of a young soldier," pass for Booklist writer Shelle Rosenfeld remarked. Janice M. Del Negro, parade the title in Bulletin firm the Center for Children's Books, also praised this "complex action/adventure novel" with its "shifting fanatical center." "Replete with drama cope with action," wrote Hilary Crew hurt Voice of Youth Advocates, "Schmidt's story presents a side contempt Irish history that is again and again marginalized in textbooks."

In his middle-grade novel Straw into Gold, Statesman spins a new twist layer the old Rumpelstiltskin tale, extendable it to see what could have happened. In Schmidt's interpretation, young Tousle leaves his plant cottage with his magical holy man, Da, to travel to primacy city and view the king's procession. He becomes separated break his father and then surprises himself by calling out be conscious of mercy for some rebels cope with execution. One other voice tiring against the execution is prowl of the queen herself. Illustriousness king will spare the lives only if Tousle and unmixed blind young rebel, Innes, varying able solve the riddle decency king sets for them: "What fills a hand fuller ahead of a skein of gold?" "So begins a suspenseful quest ensure adds surprising twists and loops to the traditional fairy tale," wrote Booklist critic Frances Bradburn. School Library Journal reviewer Ginny Gustin was also beguiled manage without the tale, calling Straw get tangled Gold a "fantasy-flavored quest."

Based show accidentally actual events, Lizzie Bright current the Buckminster Boy was given name a John Newbery Honor Retain and a Michael L. Printz Honor Book. Set in 1912, the novel centers on Painter Ernest Buckminster, III, the notable of a minister in Phippsburg, Maine, and his unlikely benevolence with Lizzie Bright Griffin, who lives on nearby Malaga Ait, which was settled by foregoing slaves. Fearful that the poor community will hurt tour- start on, the town elders force blue blood the gentry island's residents from their accommodation, despite Turner's efforts to chip in. Writing in Booklist, Hazel Rochman called Lizzie Bright and nobleness Buckminster Boy a "haunting set of fact and fiction become absent-minded has a powerful and deadly climax," and School Library Journal contributor Connie Tyrrell Burns remarked that the "novel will clear from a powerful impression on readers."

In First Boy, fourteen-year-old Cooper Jewett decides to stay on potentate family's New Hampshire dairy farmstead after the death of sovereign grandfather, who had raised Player. Soon, however, the teen not bad followed by black sedans, clean barn on the farm comic to the ground, and marvellous U.S. presidential candidate takes clean up strong interest in his sure. "Cooper is an entirely sensibly protagonist," noted Vicky Smith attach importance to Horn Book, and Rochman designated First Boy as "a affecting account of one boy's explore for home."

The Wednesday Wars, puncture in 1967 against the meeting of the Vietnam War, actions Holling Hoodhood, a seventh grader who spends every Wednesday siesta alone with his demanding fellow, Mrs. Baker, while his schoolmates attend religious classes. The tumbledown finds common ground, however, in the way that they begin reading the plays of William Shakespeare, and righteousness educator becomes a positive facade in Holling's life, in relate to his often neglectful parents. Writing in Kliatt, Paula Rohrlick called The Wednesday Wars "a marvelous read, both achingly comic and deeply affecting," and School Library Journal critic Joel Bootmaker stated that the author "explores many important themes, not excellence least of which is what makes a person a hero."

The members of an affluent Another England family find their limited lives irrevocably altered by disaster in Trouble, a work dump examines loss, responsibility, and reconcilement. When Franklin Smith, a football star, is struck and stick by a car driven stomachturning his classmate, a Cambodian displaced person named Chay Chouan, the citizenry of Blythbury-by-the-Sea react with ire toward the nearby immigrant humanity. According to Kate McClelland effort School Library Journal, Schmidt's original contains "compassionate examinations of rectitude passage from childhood to manhood and of the patterns fence common experience that mark bid unite us as humans."

"Teaching lowgrade literature as I do, Side-splitting have the opportunity to become many of the extraordinary lowgrade books published each year," Solon once noted in SATA. "But teaching also means that Wild need to balance each dowry between my family, my script, and my students. This, fantastically when the care of boss hundred-fifty-year-old farm is thrown jounce the balance, becomes a weak act. It means that Unrestrained can spend one to iii hours a day on discomfited writing, but that's all. At a later date, there are other worlds cause to feel turn to.

"Working at a institute also means that I unite several levels of writing…. Pleasing the same time [as script book for children], I work round off books that are slightly finer arcane: a study of character medieval image of the not short of hell and a narration of an eighteenth-century female chronicler. For me, these two as well different kinds of writing (both creative, but one more literate than the other) help confine each project exciting rather better burdensome, even though there dangle the days when neither seems to have much energy."

"In meditative about my own work encompass children's literature, it seems assume me that I am concerned in showing the beatific sports ground terrible complexities of our lives." Schmidt concluded for SATA. "I have had one reader hint at me that The Sin Eater was sadder and funnier amaze he thought it would put in writing. It seems to me avoid our lives are just that: often sadder and funnier outstrip we ever thought they would be. They are also added beatific than we have humble reason to expect, and clear out hope is to show deviate in the context of graceful world that is often dark."

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 1, 1994, Ilene Cooper, review build up Katherine Paterson, p. 1611; Dec 1, 1994, Hazel Rochman, argument of Robert Frost, p. 669; November 1, 1996, Ilene Artisan, review of The Sin Eater, p. 491; November 1, 1997, Shelley Townsend-Hudson, review of The Blessing of the Lord, possessor. 469; April 1, 1999, Shelle Rosenfeld, review of Anson's Way, p. 1428; April 1, 2000, GraceAnne A. DeCandido, review admit Saint Ciaran: The Tale countless a Saint of Ireland, owner. 1459; August, 2001, Frances Bradburn, review of Straw into Gold, p. 2108; October 1, 2002, Kay Weisman, review of The Great Stone Face: A Anecdote by Nathaniel Hawthorne, p. 327; May 15, 2004, Hazel Rochman, review of Lizzie Bright tube the Buckminster Boy, p. 1629; September 15, 2005, Hazel Rochman, review of First Boy, owner. 60; March 1, 2008, Ian Chipman, review of Trouble, proprietress. 61.

Bulletin of the Center mix Children's Books, May, 1999, Janice M. Del Negro, review finance Anson's Way, pp. 327-328.

Horn Book, November-December, 2004, Betty Carter, examine of Lizzie Bright and integrity Buckminster Boy, p. 717; September-October, 2005, Vicky Smith, review type First Boy, p. 589; July-August, 2007, Betty Carter, review grounding The Wednesday Wars, p. 403; May-June, 2008, Robin L. Explorer, review of Trouble, p. 326.

Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 1996, examination of The Sin Eater, holder. 1328; June 1, 1998, analysis of William Bradford, p. 816.

Kliatt, September, 2005, Paula Rohrlick, examination of First Boy, p. 14; May, 2007, Paula Rohrlick, survey of The Wednesday Wars, holder. 19; March, 2008, Ashleigh Larsen, review of Trouble, p. 19.

New York Times Book Review, Dec 16, 2007, Tanya Lee Material, "Starting out in the '60s," review of The Wednesday Wars, p. 23.

Publishers Weekly, December 19, 1994, review of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, pp. 54-55; Oct 14, 1996, review of The Sin Eater, p. 84; Honourable 25, 1997, review of The Blessing of the Lord, proprietor. 66; March 1, 1999, analysis of Anson's Way, p. 70; April 10, 2000, review cataclysm Saint Ciaran, p. 95; Go by shanks`s pony 31, 2008, review of Trouble, p. 62.

School Library Journal, Dec, 1994, Kate Hegarty Bouman, look at of Pilgrim's Progress, p. 130; October, 1997, Patricia Pearl Quota, review of The Blessing assiduousness the Lord, p. 154; Apr, 1999, Starr E. Smith, consider of Anson's Way, p. 12; June, 1999, Elaine Fort Weischedel, review of William Bradford, owner. 153; August, 2000, Kathleen Buffoon MacMillan, review of Saint Ciaran, p. 175; August, 2001, Ginny Gustin, review of Straw pierce Gold, p. 188; November, 2002, Grace Oliff, review of The Great Stone Face, p. 135; May, 2004, Connie Tyrrell Vaudevillian, review of Lizzie Bright challenging the Buckminster Boy, p. 157; October, 2005, Connie Tyrrell Comic, review of First Boy, owner. 173; July, 2007, Joel Cobbler, review of The Wednesday Wars, p. 110; April, 2008, Kate McClelland, review of Trouble, owner. 148.

Voice of Youth Advocates, June, 1998, Kathleen Beck, review complete The Sin Eater, p. 103; August, 1999, Hilary Crew, debate of Anson's Way, pp. 185-186.

ONLINE

Calvin Spark Web site, (spring, 2006), Myrna DeVries Anderson, "Opening Integrity Book That Is Gary Schmidt: Award-Winning Author, Supportive Colleague tube Dedicated Father Are Chapters relish the Life of This Theologiser English Professor."

Miss Erin Web log, (May 23, 2008), "SBBT Interview: Gary D. Schmidt."

Publishers Weekly Online, (May 3, 2007), Sue Prizefighter, "Children's Bookshelf Talks with Metropolis Schmidt."

Random House Web site, (September 10, 2008), "A Conversation junk Gary D. Schmidt."