It’s the birthday of Irene Hunt (1907-2001), author of historical novels and best known for her Newbery Honor book, Across Five Aprils (1964), about a boy growing up during the Civil War. Hunt was 57 when this novel, her first, was published.

Hunt was born in Pontiac, Illinois. Her father died of typhoid fever when Hunt was just seven, a devastating loss since she had been very close to him, and she and her mother moved to her grandparents’ farm. There she heard many Civil War stories from her grandfather that she would later use in Across Five Aprils. Hunt taught English and French from 1930 to 1945, receiving her B.A. from the University of Illinois, Urbana, in 1939, and then earned an M.A. from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, in 1946. (Go, Golden Gophers.) After this she taught psychology at the University of South Dakota, Vermillion, until 1950. (Go, ‘Yotes! That’s short for Coyotes. Yes, it’s Mascot Day here at the almanac. I’m from South Dakota and almost nobody is from South Dakota or has ever even been there, so I get excited easily. Five points to anyone who knows the University of Illinois’ mascot.)

Hunt then returned to Illinois to teach elementary and junior high school, eventually becoming director of language arts at her school system. When Across Five Aprils appeared, it won a number of awards in addition to being a Newbery Honor book, including the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award and the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award—so named because the award was bestowed on books considered “worthy to sit on a shelf with Alice in Wonderland.” (How cute is that?) Her next novel, Up a Road Slowly (1966), won the 1967 Newbery Medal. It tells the story of Julie, who loses her mother at a young age and is transplanted to the home of strict Aunt Cordelia. The novel is often moving and sometimes funny, with great characters like Cordelia’s brother, the never-sober-but-hides-it-well Uncle Haskell; Hunt handles relationships and Julie’s coming of age deftly. (NB: this is a favorite old book of mine, and I looked it up on Goodreads. There is nothing quite like looking up a favorite old book on Goodreads and discovering that in addition to many people who loved it for all the reasons you did, there are a number of people who despised it for reasons that never occurred to you. Sadder but wiser, and all that…which is one of the themes of the novel.)

Hunt wrote a handful of other novels, including Trail of Apple Blossoms (1968), about Johnny Appleseed; No Promises in the Wind (1970); and Claws of a Young Century (1980), about the suffrage movement. She died on her 94th birthday in Savoy, Illinois.

Have a lovely Friday, maybe stay off Goodreads for awhile unless you’re really feeling up to it, and stay scrupulously honest to the data.