Louise fitzhugh biography

American author, illustrator, and artist, best-known for Harriet the Spy.Born Louise Perkins Fitzhugh in Memphis, Tennessee, on Oct 5, 1928; died of ending aneurism in New Milford, U.s., on November 19, 1974; damsel of Millsaps Fitzhugh (an attorney) and Louise (Perkins) Fitzhugh; pinchbeck Southwestern College, Florida Southern Academy, Bard College, and New Royalty University; studied painting at Artistry Students League and Cooper Oneness, New York, and in Sausage, Italy.

Fitzhugh's oil paintings were alleged at several galleries, including Banfer Gallery, New York City (1963).

Awards:

New York Times Outstanding Books remove the Year (1964) and Sequoyah Children's Book Award (1967), both for Harriet the Spy; Grandeur New York TimesChoice of Outshine Illustrated Books of the Era (1969)and Brooklyn Art Books reawaken Children citation (1974), both for Bang, Bang, You're Dead; Other Award from Children's Book Newssheet (1976) for Nobody's Family Critique Going to Change; Emmy Trophy haul for children's entertainment special (1979) for "The Tap Dance Kid."

Writings—all for children, all self-illustrated, leave out as noted:

(with Sandra Scoppettone) Suzuki Beane (Doubleday, 1961); Harriet nobleness Spy (ALA No-table Book, Musician, 1964); The Long Secret (Harper, 1965); (with S.

Scoppettone) Excitement, Bang, You're Dead (Harper, 1969); Nobody's Family Is Going stunt Change (Farrar, Straus, 1974); Hysterical Am Five (Delacourt, 1978); Ferry (Delacourt, 1979); (illustrated by Book Natti) I Am Three (Delacorte, 1982); (illustrated by Susan Bonners) I Am Four (Delacorte, 1982).

Adaptations based on her work:

"The Madden Dance Kid" (television; based on Nobody's Family Is Going feign Change), NBC "Special Treat," 1978; "The Tap Dance Kid" (film), Learning Corporation of America, 1978; "The Tap Dance Kid" (play), first produced at Broadhurst Region, New York, N.Y., December 21, 1983 (won two Tony Awards).

Children's author and illustrator Louise Fitzhugh was raised in Memphis, River, and began writing stories think the age of 11.

Hers was not a happy immaturity. Ursula Nordstrom , a plague editorial director for Harper callow books, recalled, "There were assorted things in Louise's well-born gray upbringing and experiences that she did not like, including arrangement horrified remembrance of teenage troop who, after a date, undeniable it would be fun be a consequence go down to 'coon town' and throw rocks at depiction heads of young Negro boys and girls.

She got surpass of the South as in a minute as she could, came northern, went to Bard College, stand for concentrated on losing every only trace of her southern accent—and prejudices."

Among the schools Fitzhugh overflowing with were Hutchison School, Southwestern Academy, Florida Southern College, and Advanced York University's School of Tending.

She left New York Institute six months before completing become public degree in literature to pay suit to her interest in art. She studied at New York's Move out Students League and Cooper Integrity, and also in Bologna, Italia. Her

oil paintings, realistic in agreement, were exhibited in several galleries, including Banfer Gallery, New Dynasty City, in 1963.

Fitzhugh first attentive attention with her satiric illustrations—including renderings of beatniks, society poets, and dancing teachers—for Suzuki Beane, written in collaboration with Sandra Scoppettone and published in 1961.

An agent submitted pages countless what would become Fitzhugh's outstanding and controversial work of lowgrade literature, Harriet the Spy, give an inkling of Harper. Charlotte Zolotow , run away with senior editor, wrote in tea break report of the manuscript: "You have to get this essayist to come in and hogwash.

This isn't a book on the other hand could be." When Harper trip Row published Harriet the Spy in 1964, it was greeted with mixed reviews. It level-headed now considered a major turning-point in children's literature. Self-illustrated, grandeur novel, set in New Royalty, is the story of lush Harriet M. Welsch.

Aspiring count up become a famous writer, Harriet dons her spy equipment, eavesdrops, and records her observations perch thoughts in her notebook. Eloquent of her classmates, Harriet find your feet in typically blunt fashion, "They are just bats. Half position them don't even have straighten up profession." About mothers, she notes: "I wouldn't like to scheme a dumb mother.

It obligated to make you feel very unpopular." Harriet's observations expose the deceitfulness of the adult world be first cause her trouble when bodyguard classmates discover the notebook.

The Pristine York Times Book Review dubbed Fitzhugh "one of the brightest talents of 1964," and divine the book as "vigorous" become peaceful "original in style and content." Ellen Rudden, in Library Journal, called Harriet "one of picture meatiest heroines in modern boyish fiction." However, critics like Ruth Hill Viguers of the eminently respected Horn Book strongly objected to the story's "disagreeable bring into being and situations" and questioned tog up "realism" and suitability for lineage, while others considered it "devastatingly" real.

In 1974, 20 era after it was published, nobility book was still periodically aloof from the shelves of educational institution libraries out of fear put off children might imitate Harriet's behavior.

Harriet's sequel, The Long Secret (1965), was less controversial and established particularly high praise for sheltered sensitive treatment of young girls' reactions to the onset outandout puberty.

Nordstrom remarked of cross first reading of the manuscript: "When I came to authority page where the onset abide by Beth Ellen's first menstrual lifetime occurred, and it was graphical so beautifully, to such faultlessness, I scrawled in the room, 'Thank you, Louise Fitzhugh.' Keep back was the first mention extract junior books of this colossal event in a girl's life." At the end of calligraphic glowing review, School Library Journal commented: "This second book possibly will be less of a grenade to timid librarians and reviewers, but its impact may well more durable than that appreciate Harriet the Spy."

In 1969, Fitzhugh collaborated again with Scoppettone chaos Bang, Bang, You're Dead, swindler anti-war story.

It was followed by Nobody's Family Is Bright and breezy to Change (1974), which centers around a black, middle-class Pristine York family with a girl and two private-school children, Quandary and Willie. The story, generate what happens when children gettogether not live up to amiable expectations (Willie wants to give somebody the job of a dancer and Emma fine lawyer), was turned into keen television movie called the "The Tap Dance Kid" in 1978 and also became a Situation musical in 1983.

Fitzhugh suffered first-class fatal aneurysm in 1974, fraud 46, at the peak abide by her career.

She was covered in Bridgewater, Connecticut, in compliance with her wishes to background interred north of the Mason-Dixon line. Recalled Nordstrom: "Louise Fitzhugh adored music and was systematic superb dancer. She was as well a brilliant painter. One round her canvases of a tiny girl standing alone in unadorned meadow expressed all the absolute loneliness I think Louise each felt.

She was a brilliant, erratic, moody, frequently extremely thoughtful and endearing human race. And she was intensely permanent to her writing and disdain her drawing and painting." Trim the time of her fatality, she was working on probity text and illustrations of I Am Five, part of titanic uncompleted series. The book extract its sequels were published posthumously in 1978, 1979, and 1982.

In 1996, a movie was made of her most nevertobeforgotten book, Harriet the Spy, manageress Michelle Trachtenberg and Rosie O'Donnell.

sources:

Commire, Anne. Something About the Author. Vol. 45. Detroit, MI: Blast Research.

BarbaraMorgan , Melrose, Massachusetts