It’s the birthday of two authors who have each written a ton of books for children and young adults: Eloise Greenfield (1929) and Gary Paulsen (1939).

Greenfield was born in Parmele, North Carolina, and raised in Washington, D.C., where her family moved because of the Great Depression. She has warm memories of growing up in a low-rent housing project with good access to a library. Greenfield notes that as a child, most of the art in children’s books was composed of simple line drawings; as a result, she didn’t realize the characters were not African American, and she didn’t feel left out. However, by the time she had children herself, the art work had changed and African American children weren’t seeing themselves in books. She has worked to change that and to write stories about African Americans that are both more realistic and more positive than most of what she could find as a reader. She’s written more than 40 books since 1972. A few titles include Africa Dream (1976, illustrated by Carole Byard), which won the Coretta Scott King Award; Childtimes: A Three-Generation Memoir, co-written with her mother, Lessie Jones Little (1979); and Brothers & Sisters: Family poems (2008).

Paulsen, best known as the author of Hatchet (1987), was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and had a childhood no one would envy. His parents were alcoholics and he was often uprooted; sometimes he lived with relatives, sometimes he ran off and lived as a street kid. (I’m leaving out a ton of details. If Paulsen ever writes an autobiography, it will be hair-raising.) When he was 13 years old, he walked into a library for the first time. The librarian offered him a library card and it changed his life. (Yay, librarians! Twenty life points for anyone out there who is a librarian.) Paulsen, who  feels most at home in the wilderness, told teachingbooks.net in an interview, “I felt much safer in the Iditarod than I had as a child. Running across bad ice and living to tell about it felt safer to me than my entire childhood.” Enormously popular with young male readers, Paulsen has written many books in the wilderness adventure genre. (Think Hemingway for children. Unless you hate Hemingway. Then forget I said that.) He’s travelled the world, sailed the South Pacific, and avoids people—at least, most adult people. He told the New York Times in 2006, “I don’t have anything against individuals. But the species is a mess.” Hatchet, which alone has sold several million copies, may have helped save the life of a Boy Scout actually lost in the wilderness for four days (Jonathan Pitts, “Novel might have helped save missing Scout’s life,” The Baltimore Sun, March 21, 2007). The boy had read the book several years earlier.

Have a fine Thursday, take a map, and stay scrupulously honest to the data.