Helen Dean Fish
Personal Information
Description
Helen Dean Fish was born in Hempstead, Long Island. In 1912 she graduated from Wellesley College in Massachusetts. After graduating, she taught at the Asheville Home School for Girls in Asheville, North Carolina. In 1914 she studied playwriting at Radcliffe College in Massachusetts. In 1915 she moved to New York City and began working with drama clubs. In 1917 she became a manuscript reader at the Frederick A. Stokes Co., and in 1922 she was appointed their first children's book editor. She remained in that position when Stokes was merged with J. B. Lippincott in 1941, and she continued in it until her death at age 64. In 1937, she published Animals of the Bible, a collection of Bible verses selected by her and illustrated by Dorothy Lathrop, which won the first Caldecott Medal ever awarded. She wrote several children's books and one book for adults.
Books
Four-and-twenty blackbirds
Twenty-four short stories set in the English countryside, which give new interpretations of the origins of such well-known proverbial sayings as "Never say die" and "Look before you leap."
Animals of the Bible
When the Root Children wake up
The root children who have been sleeping all winter awake to become flower children and experience the new life, the color, and the joys of spring.