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Florence Atwater

Born: 1889
Died: 1979

Pen Name: Florence Hasseltine Carroll Atwater, Florence Hasseltine Atwater

Connection to Illinois: Atwater attended the University of Chicago and studied French Literature.

Biography: Florence Atwater was married to the author Richard Atwater. Mr. Atwater originally wrote a form of ''Mr. Popper's Penguins'' to be a fantasy book. It was much enjoyed by his daughters but he set it aside, not happy with it. In 1934, Mr. Atwater suffered a stroke and, though he survived till 1948, he never recovered sufficiently to write again. To help support the family, Florence Atwater wrote a number of articles for the ''New Yorker'' and ''The Atlantic''. Looking for ways to make additional income she went back to Atwater's original manuscript and took it to a couple of publishers. Both rejected it. She reviewed the script and rewrote the beginning and the end, counterbalancing the fantasy with a story line that accentuated practical consequences. This revised version, illustrated by the Robert Lawson, received a much more positive reception from publishers and ''Mr. Popper's Penguins'' was published in 1938 to immediate acclaim. It won a 1939 Newberry Honor and has been in print ever since.


Awards:
  • '''''Mr. Popper's Penguins'''''
  • -- Newbery Honor Book, American Library Association, 1939
  • -- Young Reader's Choice Award, Pacific Northwest Library Association, 1941
  • -- Lewis Carroll Shelf Award
  • -- New York Public Library's 100 Great Children's Books/100 Years

Primary Literary Genre(s): Fiction

Primary Audience(s): Children

Florence Atwater on WorldCat : http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=florence++atwater


Selected Titles

Mr. Popper's penguins
ISBN: 9780316058438 OCLC: 17265673

The unexpected delivery of a large crate containing an Antarctic penguin changes the life and fortunes of Mr. Popper, a house painter obsessed by dreams of the Polar regions.

 

 

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