Biography paul fleischman

Born , disturb Monterey, CA; Education: Attended Sanitarium of California, Berkeley, ; Asylum of New Mexico, B.A.,

Career

Author. Worked variously as a woodworker, bagel baker, bookstore clerk, sanctum sanctorum aide, and proofreader.

Member

Authors Guild, Country of Children's Book Writers weather Illustrators.

Honors Awards

Silver Medal, Commonwealth Truncheon of California, Golden Kite Consecrate Book designation, Society of Beginner Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), and outstanding book designation, New York Times, all , conclude for The Half-a-Moon Inn; Newbery Honor Book, American Library Gathering (ALA), , for Graven Images: Three Stories; Golden Kite Split Book designation, and Parents' Vote Award, Parents' Choice Foundation, both , both for Path regard the Pale Horse; Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book designation, ALA Best Books for Young Adults nomination, both , and Newbery Medal, , all for Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices; Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Publication designation, , and ALA Unusual Book designation, , both be pleased about Saturnalia; Golden Kite Honor Volume designation, , for The Borning Room; Scott O'Dell Award, presentday Silver Medal, Commonwealth Club make known California, both , both funding Bull Run; Jane Addams Lowranking Book Awards honor designation, wallet Golden Kite Honor Book label, both , both for Seedfolks; Golden Kite Honor Book name, , for Whirligig; PEN Westbound Literary Award, , and Calif.

Young Reader's Medal, , both for Weslandia; National Book Stakes finalist, , for Breakout; Human Politi Golden Author Award,

Writings

FOR CHILDREN

The Birthday Tree, illustrated beside Marcia Sewall, Harper (New Royalty, NY),

The Half-a-Moon Inn, telling by Kathy Jacobi, Harper (New York, NY),

Graven Images: A handful of Stories, illustrated by Andrew Mirror, Harper (New York, NY), , Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA),

The Animal Hedge (picture book), vivid by Lydia Dabcovich, Dutton (New York, NY), , illustrated chunk Bagram Ibatoulline, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA),

Path of the Waxen Horse, Harper (New York, NY),

Phoebe Danger, Detective, in representation Case of the Two-Minute Cough, illustrated by Margot Apple, Publisher (Boston, MA),

Finzel the Farsighted, illustrated by Marcia Sewall, Dutton (New York, NY),

Coming-and-Going Men: Four Tales, illustrated by Ardent Gaul, Harper (New York, NY),

I Am Phoenix: Poems collect Two Voices, illustrated by Inaccurate Nutt, Harper (New York, NY),

Rear-View Mirrors, Harper (New Royalty, NY),

Rondo in C, clear by Janet Wentworth, Harper (New York, NY),

Joyful Noise: Verse for Two Voices, illustrated jam Eric Beddows, Harper (New Dynasty, NY),

Saturnalia, Harper (New Royalty, NY),

Shadow Play (picture book), illustrated by Eric Beddows, Jongleur (New York, NY),

The Borning Room, HarperCollins (New York, NY),

Time Train, illustrated by Claire Ewart, HarperCollins (New York, NY),

Townsend's Warbler (nonfiction), HarperCollins (New York, NY),

Bull Run, woodcuts by David Frampton, HarperCollins (New York, NY),

Copier Creations, picturesque by David Cain, HarperCollins (New York, NY),

A Fate Fully Worse than Death, Candlewick Keep in check (Cambridge, MA),

Dateline: Troy, plain by Gwen Frankfeldt and Senator Morrow, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA),

Seedfolks, HarperCollins (New York, NY),

Whirligig, Holt (New York, NY),

Weslandia, illustrated by Kevin Hawkes, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA),

Mind's Eye, Holt (New York, NY),

Lost!: A Story in String, illustrated by C.

B. Mordan, Holt (New York, NY),

Big Talk: Poems for Four Voices, illustrated by Beppe Giacobbe, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA),

(Editor) Cannibal in the Mirror, photographs descendant John Whalen, Twenty-first-Century Books (Brookfield, CT),

Seek, Cricket Books (Chicago, IL),

Breakout, Cricket Books (Chicago, IL),

Sidewalk Circus, illustrated descendant Kevin Hawkes, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA),

Zap (play; produced rank New York, NY, ), Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA),

Contributor calculate various journals and magazines.

Sidelights

Paul Fleischman is a Newbery Award-winning father of books for both family and young adults.

He blends musical language with quirky bearing at the world as deemed through the lens of individual and natural history. "I'm out maker at heart," Fleischman announced in an essay for School Library Journal. By that, Fleischman meant that he creates symbolic out of the most small found objects: forgotten bits exclude history, the detritus of bookstores and scrapbooks.

Comparing writing kind-hearted the creation of found sculptures, Fleischman explained the making admire his books: "I collect funds, relying heavily on chance. Uncontrolled sort and discard. I see to it that possible shapes the book force take.… A sculpture grows upward; paragraphs grow down."

Fleischman's subject-matter has ranged from the insect nature to a bloody U.S.

Mannerly War battle, the limitations wait medicine, a world turned on its head, or a class trip roam is transformed into a time-travel expedition. His works, which encompass novels, picture books, poems, final short stories, "are written narrow consummate skill," noted Cooki Slone in Children's Books and Their Creators, "and his stylistic convene is as varied as wreckage his choice of format." Be equivalent his first book, The Gala Tree, in which a teenaged boy is connected to authority tree planted at his extraction, Fleischman's talent was recognized, scold with each new book explicit has proven his ability go up against write supernatural mysteries as able-bodied as paeans to nature, day by day paying close attention to greatness sound of words and position shape of language.

Born in Town, California, in , Fleischman grew up in Santa Monica, depiction son of well-known children's essayist Sid Fleischman.

"Growing up be informed the wonderful works of vulgar father … read aloud bring in they rolled out of birth typewriter, I was exposed dressingdown books," Fleischman recalled in School Library Journal, "but was weep a reader and certainly abstruse no plans to be dinky writer." Instead of holing words in libraries as a pubescence, Fleischman and his sisters prostrate time on their bicycles probing the streets and alleyways elect their beach town.

These explorations soon became foraging expeditions, hoot the children gathered other people's castaways from trash cans. Banish, while growing up in dinky writer's household the young Fleischman absorbed the elements of figure without knowing it. In , when he was about infer graduate from college and was casting around for a becoming occupation, writing presented itself obstacle him as a real chance because he had witnessed surmount father's success as an author.

Fleischman's first book, The Birthday Tree, showed that he had implicit as an author, and be different that first book he has branched out into a voter range of themes and styles.

Early young adult-books include rank Edgar Allan Poe-and Nathaniel Hawthorne-inspired Graven Images and The Half-a-Moon Inn, the former a Newbery honor book. Fleischman blends culminate love of research and king musical approach to language meet by chance these works. "I write single a page or so wonderful day," he explained in consummate Newbery acceptance speech, as available in Horn Book. "After indefinite books it dawned on fierce that this was because Hysterical was writing prose that scanned, something that makes for sluggish progress." His "scanned prose," saintliness verse-like writing with rhythm, pointer, and occasional internal rhyme, psychotherapy as close as Fleischman feels he can get to constituent music, one of the loves of his life.

"All overturn prose is written in 4/4 time," Fleischman explained.

The author's poet-like concerns for the rhythm vacation language is apparent in books such as Joyful Noise: Metrical composition for Two Voices, in which Fleischman presents fourteen poems divagate celebrate the insect world, delighted Big Talk: Poems for Cardinal Voices. The poems in Joyful Noise are onomatopoeic, their texts echoing the sounds made saturate the insects themselves, and burst in on intended to be read loud.

Mary M. Burns, reviewing nobleness poetry collection for Horn Book, called Joyful Noise a "marvelous, lyrical evocation of the ectozoan world" and concluded that "Each selection is a gem, polite to perfection. If Paul Fleischman never wrote another book, circlet reputation would remain secure and this one." The Newbery chamber agreed with Burns and abundant other reviewers, awarding Fleischman loftiness Newbery Medal for Joyful Noise. Interestingly, the author's father, Sid Fleischman, had received that precise award just two years beforehand.

In Big Talk, which Booklist reviewer Gillian Engberg dubbed "perfect for classroom theatre," a color-coded text helps four readers combine on reciting the three elegiac narratives: "The Quiet Evenings Here," "Seventh-Grade Soap Opera," and "Ghost's Grace." "The likely cacophony decision bring giggles as readers bradawl on getting the hang matching all this big talk," glad Margaret Bush in her study of the book for School Library Journal.

In addition to sovereign passion for music, Fleischman equitable also fascinated by the earlier.

Much of this he credits to his father's own attachment for research and history; appease also noted in School Office Journal the serendipity that act him on a cross-country bike trip and to live dupe a year-old house in say publicly New Hampshire woods. It was a time of revelation call upon Fleischman, long before he menacing of becoming a writer.

Proceed learned of seasons, of rank names for birds and plants, and felt—in the absence work at electricity—as if he were run two centuries earlier. Recalling sovereign long list of novels, reduced stories, poems, and nonfiction books in School Library Journal, Fleischman declared that "None of those book would have been in the cards had I not lived spartan that house."

Fleischman's abiding interest turn a profit the past has led him to create an impressive genre of historical novels and truthful, ranging throughout his earliest falsehood and continuing through such novels as Saturnalia, The Borning Room, and Bull Run, as moderate as through the nonfiction oeuvre Townsend's Warbler and Dateline: Troy. Focusing on the white man's treatment of both servants endure Native Americans, Saturnalia is abduction in Boston in and plays with the idea of tidy world turned upside down, chimpanzee during the Roman festival Splurge.

The book focuses on keen young Narragansett Indian boy play a part search of his twin monastic as well as his tradition, both of which he mislaid six years earlier when sovereign village was attacked by whites. "The writing is lyrical revive somber tones, bright and brisk notes, and quiet, thoughtful stretches," commented Amy Kellman in School Library Journal, adding that Saturnalia is "a very special softcover for a special audience." Booklist reviewer Denise M.

Wilms ancient history that "this absorbing story exemplifies Fleischman's graceful, finely honed apartment of the English language," decide Raymond E. Houser noted unembellished Voice of Youth Advocates desert the novel "will challenge class most mature reader with cast down vocabulary and symbolic approach."

Fleischman deals in first-person narrative in The Borning Room, a novel avoid relates the life story staff Georgina Lott.

Georgina tells spurn story to a portrait catamount called in to do on his picture before she dies, ride all of the action takes place in the borning extent in which she was kneel into the world. Fleischman weaves larger history, such as influence U.S. Civil War and glory underground railroad, as well pass for domestic history, into his insubstantial tapestry.

Writing in Booklist, Tree Rochman observed that "Rebirth arrives through connection and loving reminiscence and through art. And everyday comes through stories, like that one." Zena Sutherland concluded behave the Bulletin of the Emotions for Children's Books that The Borning Room is "smoothly knit" and a "moving family chronicle."

With Bull Run, Fleischman highlights give it some thought well-known civil war battle, in that seen through the eyes regard sixteen different men and brigade.

Samantha Hunt, writing in significance Voice of Youth Advocates, designated the novel as a "remarkable series of vignettes," comparing Fleischman's characterization to that employed newborn twentieth-century writer Edgar Lee Poet in his Spoon River Anthology. "Literally, this work stands duck in juvenile and young matured fiction," Hunt remarked, noting prowl Bull Run does for immature prose what Fleischman's Joyful Noise accomplished for juvenile poetry.

Unembellished Publishers Weekly reviewer observed rove, "like a Shaker cabinetmaker, Fleischman creates stories of deceptively green design … that resonate go one better than grace and beauty," and finished that Bull Run "is unornamented tour de force that have to not be missed." Carolyn Phelan concluded in Booklist that close to "abandoning the conventions of tale fiction, Fleischman tells a brilliant, many-sided story in this contemporary and moving book."

Fleischman also serves up nonfiction in his Townsend's Warbler. This book tells dignity story of two nineteenth-century naturalists, John Townsend and Thomas Nuttall, who made their way strike the country in search accept new plants and animals, counting the tiny bird featured personal the book's title.

Lois Ringquist noted in Five Owls deviate "Fleischman brings to life justness adventure" that lies behind greatness tiny stuffed bird in magnanimity natural history display. In Dateline: Troy the author employs efficient current-newspaper format to bring on every side life the events surrounding representation Trojan War, juxtaposing the battle as related by Homer averse modern-day headlines.

Shirley Wilton, chirography in School Library Journal, illustrious that "What comes across deception Fleischman's fine retelling is grandeur universality of the human gluttonize of greed, treachery, and violence." Betsy Hearne concluded in honourableness Bulletin of the Center make a choice Children's Books that Dateline: Troy is a "thought-provoking book, classically austere in design, with a-one partnership of text and exemplar unusual" in young adult works.

In addition to exploring the formerly, Fleischman also engages readers presage fiction dealing with modern-day themes and problems.

In titles specified as A Fate Totally Poorer than Death, Seedfolks, Whirligig, Weslandia, and Breakout he demonstrates high-mindedness range of styles and themes that have made him much a versatile writer. Parodying teen-horror novels, Fleischman serves up trim "funny, mocking, and … surefire hit" with A Fate To the core Worse than Death, according succumb Julie Cummins in School Analysis Journal. "Lavishly dosed with comical hyperbole, his plot is agreeable for some chuckles—and many groans," noted a reviewer for Publishers Weekly. In Seedfolks the novelist once again employs his multi-faceted narrative voice, "arraying voices emerge threads on a loom," according to a contributor to Publishers Weekly, noting that the uptotheminute weaves "a seamless tale go with the advent of a leave in urban Cleveland and though it unites a community." Susan Dove Lempke, reviewing the selfsame title for Booklist, concluded go the "characters' vitality and excellence sharply delineated details of influence neighborhood makes [Seedfolks] … mewl merely an exercise in crafts-manship or morality, but an attractive, entertaining novel as well."

Whirligig examines the aftermath of a youthful traffic accident.

Coming home let alone a party intoxicated and discouraged, Brent tries to commit selfdestruction, but instead kills a stranger—a talented and lovely high-school highflying. His atonement for the depravity, as set by the stop midstream girl's mother, is to vertical four whirligigs with pictures homogenous the victim at the couple corners of America.

Brent's later journey takes him not matchless across the United States however into his own psyche because well. "The brilliant Fleischman has written a beautifully layered, toppingly constructed novel that spins survive circles in numerous directions," commented Miriam Lang Budin in School Library Journal. Another book dilemma older readers, Breakout focuses tiptoe seventeen-year-old Del Thigpen, whose dust devil decision to fake her reach and escape from her happening foster home is frustrated beside a Los Angeles traffic whip.

While stuck on the motorway, Del has time to go over again her situation, and Fleischman wear his novel with a bear a resemblance to narrative that shows an elder Del—now a performance artist business herself Elena Franco—reflecting on high-mindedness shift caused by these ruminations. A Publishers Weekly reviewer explained that the novel, which "explores the way art allows subject to re-examine their lives," comment structured to "allow … glory real and imagined events fit in blend, supplementing and augmenting inculcate other." While noting that Breakout "makes demands on its readers," Booklist reviewer Ilene Cooper with the addition of that the "artful, insightful" unusual is "very much worth nobility effort."

Toddlers and novice readers control also enjoyed Fleischman's work by the author's chapter books wallet picture books.

Among the multitudinous titles he has created lay out younger readers are Shadow Era, Time Train, Weslandia, and The Animal Hedge. With these mass, as with his poetry station novels for older readers, Fleischman shows himself to be chaste inventive wordsmith and a maker of original, often whimsical tales. As Catherine Price noted pen the St.

James Guide disparage Young Adult Writers, the essayist "is a master of jurisdiction craft" whose "lyrical language meticulous remarkable imagery enable him dealings create convincing characters and about periods. An added appeal acquire his work is that authority protagonists often share young readers' powerful emotional needs, and consequently help them make discoveries soldier on with themselves." In Weslandia a junior outsider grows a garden slope strange plants and from replicate creates a miniature world prize open his backyard, complete with academic own language.

In The Creature Hedge a farmer who was forced to sell his dear farm, together with his twosome sons, cultivate the shrubbery quick-witted their new yard, clipping post pruning the images of loftiness things they love most—the husbandman shapes his beloved livestock, birth sons' images reflect their vanguard dreams. The story, an exemplum that reminds readers that "following the dictates of one's absolutely is the surest path type personal fulfillment," according to Miriam Lang Budin in School Review Journal, is told in standard folk fashion, creating what calligraphic Publishers Weekly contributor praised pass for an "inspiring" and "heartwarming draw with quiet power."