Virginia Euwer Wolff
On August 25th, Virginia Euwer Wolff was born in Portland, Oregon. Her family lived on an apple and pear orchard near Mount Hood. Her father died when she was five years old and she admits her childhood was pretty messed up, but she held things together with her violin. She graduated from Smith College. She raised a son and daughter before going back to teaching high school English.
She was almost fifty years old when she started writing children books. Virginia thought she might have one or two good books in her before the end but that was proven wrong. Today, she is no longer teaching, but writes full-time.
When Wolff was asked why she writes for kids and not grown-ups, She responded, "Because I don't think I have a handle on how to write for grown-ups. The grown-up publishing world is so fraught with one-upsmanship, scorn and snobbery. I did write an adult novel. Thank goodness it went out of print. I think we kids' authors still start out with hope every morning. We honor our audience."
Ms. Wolff has received many awards for her works, which include the Golden Kite Award for Fiction for her book Make Lemonade, the ALA Notable Book for Children for The Mozart Season and many, many others.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/virgin...
“I tell you this because books for young readers are so often written about that very moment: the moment of the fork. The moment the old man cannot return to.”
“You ever laughed so hardnobody in the world could hurt you for a minute,no matter what they tried to do to you?”
“How many neighbors ignoring Jolly for her ignorance and bad luck could go down on their knees and save their kid from choking to death this afternoon while the world was going on outside in the sunshine?”
“You get olderand you are a whole mess of things,new thoughts, sorry feelings,big plans, enormous doubts,goling along hoping and getting disappointed,over and over again,no wonder I don't recognizemy little crayon picture.It appears to be meand it isand it is not.”
“I sure would like to get kissed.How would that feel on my mouth,How different would I be after,a changed climate down in my insides?”
“While I fold laundry I memorize things for school, dates of wars: French ones, African ones, Russian ones, battles of all ugly kinds. It's a shame to have us hopeful young students learn these horrible things. Exactly the kind of behaving they have told us over and over again not to do is what the history class is full of, full-grown adults making these wars: killing each other for land, for religions, for greed and more greed, Why bother to have children and educate them and invent things to make their lives better, just to send them off to war and get slaughtered?”
“If you dont like me, Walk away , Matter of fact Run Away”
“Some people make a bad bed, they just have to lie in it.”
“Rise to the occassion which is life!”