Born on March 25, 1964, her titles include Because of Winn Dixie, The Tiger Rising, The Tale of Desperaux, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, The Magician’s Elephant, and Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures. She has won just about every children’s award imaginable including the Newbery Medal, the Mark Twain Award, and the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. Many of her longer works have been adapted into films and/or stage productions, and at least one of them has become an opera. She writes about things like hope and belief in the midst of very difficult circumstances. An interesting factoid about this author is that she writes many of her stories about animals, often placing them as a main character in her story; however, as a child, she hated reading this kind of story.
Happy birthday, Kate!