Jean Fritz

Jean Fritz
Born	November 16, 1915 (1915-11-16) Hankow, China
Occupation	Author, biographer
Nationality	American (naturalized)
Genres	Children's books
Spouse(s)	Michael Fritz

Jean Guttery Fritz (born November 16, 1915), is an American children's author and biographer.

Early life

Jean Fritz was born to American missionaries in Hankow, China, where she lived until she was twelve. She was an only child (when she was eleven, a sister Miriam died one week after birth). Growing up, she went to a British school and kept a journal about her days in China with Lin Nai-Nai, her amah. The family emigrated to the United States when she was in the eighth grade.

She graduated from Wheaton College, Massachusetts, in 1937 and married Michael Fritz in 1941. They had two children, David and Andrea, named after Fritz' best friend during her elementary years.

In the 1960's and 1970's she got a few writing jobs but her children's stories were rejected for publication.

After she worked as a librarian for two years, she learned about children's literature, and sent her stories to get published. They were accepted, and she gained much fame from the popularity of the books. She currently lives in Dobbs Ferry, New York.

Works

Fritz's writing career started with the publication of several short stories in Humpty Dumpty magazine early in the 1950s. Her first book was published in 1954, Bunny Hopwell's First Spring, followed in 1955 by 121 Pudding Street, a work based on her own children. She often wrote Westerns or and other stories of frontier America because her father told her stories of American heroes as she was growing up. Her first historical novel for children was The Cabin Faced West (1958).

Her 1982 autobiography Homesick, My Own Story won a National Book Award in category Children's Fiction and was named a 1983 Newbery Honor Book. Her body of work for children earned her the occasional Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal in 1983 (awarded 18 times in 58 years to 2011).

List of titles

^{[citation needed]}

• 121 Pudding Street
• And Then What Happened, Paul Revere?
• Around the World in a Hundred Years
• Brady
• Brendan the Navigator, the History Mystery about the Discovery of America
• Bully for You, Teddy Roosevelt
• The Cabin Faced West
• Can't You Make Them Behave, King George?
• China's Long March: 6,000 Miles of Danger
• The Double Life of Pocahontas
• Early Thunder
• Meow, is that My Cat?
• George Washington's Breakfast
• The Great Little Madison
• Homesick, My Own Story (autobiographical)
• Just a Few Words, Mr. Lincoln
• Leonardo's Horse
• The Lost Colony of Roanoke
• Mk
• Shh! We're Writing the Constitution
• Stonewall
• Surprising Myself
• Traitor: the Case of Benedict Arnold
• What's the Big Idea, Ben Franklin?
• Where Do You Think You're Going, Christopher Columbus?
• Where Was Patrick Henry on the 29th of May?
• Who's That Stepping on Plymouth Rock?
• Why Don't You Get a Horse, Sam Adams?
• Why Not Lafayette?
• Will You Sign Here, John Hancock?
• You Want Women to Vote, Lizzie Stanton?

External links

• Jean Fritz at Children's Book Council