It’s the birthday of British children’s book author Mary (Pearson) Norton (1903-1992, #nicelonglife), best known for her series on the Borrowers, a race of tiny people six inches tall who live secretly alongside humans and “borrow” from them. The original book, The Borrowers (1952), won England’s Carnegie Medal, which recognizes outstanding books for children, and [...]
It’s the birthday of Richard Adams (1920-2016, #nicelonglife), whose novel Watership Down (1972) about a colony of rabbits searching for a new home was an instant bestseller and ultimately sold more than 50 million copies. Adams was born in Wash Common, Berkshire, England, and spent his childhood exploring the Berkshire Downs, where he would one [...]
It’s the birthday of two Pulitzer Prize-winning novelists, Colson Whitehead (b. 1969) and Michael Cunningham (b. 1952); today we talk about Whitehead, whose 2016 alternative history novel The Underground Railroad won the National Book Award for Fiction, the Pulitzer, the Carnegie Medal for Fiction, and was a #1 New York Times bestseller. The Underground Railroad [...]