about the book
When she arrived in America in the early 1900s, Ukrainian-born Clara Lemlich knew not a word of English. Neither did she know a thing about the deplorable status of women in the workforce in those days. She wanted to go to school and learn!
But women were supposed to work and were supposed to be happy with the little pay they got.
Clara had to grow up fast and find work in a shirtwaist factory, but that didn’t stop her. Clara went to night school and learned English, helping to support her family. When she finally had had enough of the obstacles put in front of her success, just because she was a woman, Clara rallied her fellow female shirtwaist factory workers. Together they led the largest walkout of women workers in American history.
about the author
Michelle Markel and her older sister grew up playing together nearby the movie studios of Culver City, California. That was fun, but early on Michelle, even before she could read, fell in love with the illustrations of the Madeline stories. Maybe this is why she majored in French later in life?
By the time she got to grades five and six, Michelle learned that her father was an aspiring author. In imitation of her father, Michelle started tapping out stories of her own on a typewriter. She continued writing stories and poems throughout high school and college at USC and UCLA (where she majored in French literature). Lots of them were published in student publications. Seeking a career doing some type of writing, Michelle decided to go back and get a degree in journalism. Soon after she became a freelance journalist and found work with publications like The Wall St. Journal and The Los Angeles Times.
When Michelle married and had children, two daughters, she remembered how much she loved illustrated books as a kid. She decided to try her hand at writing children’s books and got published! Today Michelle has written books in several genres, including fiction, nonfiction, and creative nonfiction.
Michelle and her husband currently live with two pet cats in West Hills, California.
Source:
Author website
Also by Michelle Markel:
The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau. Eerdman’s Books for Young Readers. 2012.
about the illustrator
At 100 illustrated books, Melissa Sweet has made a name for herself in the children’s book world, and she shows no sign of stopping now!
When she was a kid, she was always doing paint-by-number artworks, making paper dolls, using Spirographs and Colorforms (if you don’t know what these are, don’t tell her, it makes her feel old). She says, “My whole world was about making stuff so it never occurred to me to do something else.” By seven, she was selling woven pot holders and cookies. Needless to say, school was a bit difficult for this restlessly productive little girl.
Her first art lessons came from watching painter Bob Gnagy on TV in the 1960s. By high school she was taking lots of art classes. Melissa went to Endicott College and then studied art at the Kansas City Art Institute.
Her first jobs were in commercial art, making posters, handmade books, and greeting cards. She broke into the children’s book illustration world with the Pinky and Rex easy reading series with her signature watercolor art. Now, she both writes and illustrates children’s books.
Melissa lives with her husband and step-daughter in Maine near a harbor. They have two dogs, Rufus who inspired the book Carmine and Nellie, who is really a ninja pretending to be a ballerina!
Sources:
Illustrator website
Illustrator biography: IndieBound
Illustrator biography: Toys Are Tools
Also by Melissa Sweet:
Firefly July : A Year of Very Short Poems by Paul B. Janeczko. Candlewick Press. 2014.
Little Red Writing by Joan Holub. Chronicle Books. 2013.
A Splash of Red : The Life and Art of Horace Pippin by Jen Bryant. Knopf Books for Young Readers. 2013.
Mrs. Harkness and the Panda by Alicia Potter. Knopf Books for Young Readers. 2012.
Spike, the Mixed-Up Monster by Susan Hood. Paula Wiseman. 2012.
Balloons over Broadway : The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade. Houghton Mifflin. 2011.
A Giant Crush by Gennifer Choldenko. Putnam Publishing. 2011.
Rubia and the Three Osos by Susan Middleton Elya. Hyperion Press. 2010.
Day Is Done by Peter Yarrow. Sterling Publishing. 2009.
Tupelo Rides the Rails. Houghton Mifflin. 2008.
Off to Kindergarten by Tony Johnson. Cartwheel Books. 2007.
Carmine : A Little More Red. Houghton Mifflin. 2005.
The Boy Who Drew Birds : A Story of John James Audubon by Jacqueline Davies. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2004.
read more!
The Bobbin Girl by Emily Arnold McCully
Rebecca is a bobbin girl, helping to support her family by working long shifts in a hot, noisy cotton mill. Conditions there are poor, and when talk of lowering workers’ wages gets round, Rebecca’s friend Judith decides to protest. However, troublemakers are usually fired. Will Rebecca have the courage to stand up for what she believes?
Dolores Huerta : A Hero to Migrant Workers by Sarah Warren
In the 1950s, Dolores Huerta was a teacher living in California. She noticed the plight of some of her Spanish-speaking students—that their parents were working for unlivable wages picking grapes on Californian farms. When her protests to the workers’ bosses did not work, she organized a workers strike and became a leading migrant worker activist!
The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau by Michelle Markel
Henri Rousseau is famous today as an artist, but did you know he had no formal training before he started painting… at age 40? No one ever thought he was talented, but Henri saw visions of jungles in his head he needed to paint. He taught himself. He painted and painted until the distant lands, animals, and jungles came alive on his canvases!