Nina Schneider, Author of Children's Science Books, Dies at 94

By DENNIS HEVESI [New York TImes]

Nina Schneider, who with her husband, Herman, wrote dozens of science
books for children that deftly explained the intricacies of stars,
plants, the human body and even the networks of pipes and cables below
city streets, died on September 8 [2007] on Martha's Vineyard,
Massachusetts. She was 94 and lived on the island.

The cause was a stroke, her granddaughter Daisy Colchie Eniex said.

Starting in the mid-1940s, Mrs. Schneider and her husband wrote nearly
80 books, she assuming the role of the questioning child and he, a
former science teacher, providing the answers. Mr. Schneider died in
2003.

Their books include: "How Big Is Big? From Stars to Atoms, a Yardstick
for the Universe" (1946); "Let's Look Inside Your House" (1948); "How
Your Body Works" (1950); "Let's Look Under the City: Water, Gas,
Waste, Electricity, Telephone" (1950); "Plants in the City" (1951);
"Science Fun With Milk Cartons" (1953); and "Science Fun With a
Flashlight" (1975). None of the science books she wrote with her
husband remain in print.

On her own, Mrs. Schneider wrote a series of books, starting with
"Hercules, the Gentle Giant" (1947), that retold ancient myths for
very young readers. In 1948 she wrote "While Susie Sleeps" (W. R.
Scott), which told children what was going on after their bedtimes:
bakers making bread, farmers hauling vegetables to market, the milkman
on his route, birds asleep, but fireflies flitting.

Then, in 1980, she wrote a novel that was anything but for children.
"The Woman Who Lived in a Prologue" (Houghton Mifflin) tells the story
of Ariadne Arkady, a Jewish matriarch who was brought to America when
she was 4 and looks back on her life as a series of false starts: a
humiliating first love affair, a horrific illegal abortion, a suicide
attempt, the emotional illness of a son, her husband's discovery of
her adultery, her spiriting of a peace-activist grandson to Canada
during the Vietnam War.

A review in The New York Times called it an "astonishingly
intelligent" pseudo-memoir that was "told in a voice that lingers long
after the book is closed."

Nina Zimet Schneider was born in Antwerp, Belgium, on January 29,
1913, one of four children. Her father was a diamond cutter in Antwerp
and, after the family moved, in New York.

While a teenager she married Saul Chernowitz, an engineer. They lived
in a utopian Jewish commune in New Jersey, but the marriage lasted
only a few years. She moved to Brooklyn [New York], graduated from
Brooklyn College and married Mr. Schneider.

Mrs. Schneider is survived by a sister, Judith Singer of Los Angeles
[California]; a brother, Julian Zimet of Rome [Italy]; a son, Steven,
of Bordeaux, France; two daughters, Elizabeth Schneider of Manhattan
[New York] and Lucy Schneider of Portland, Oregon; six grandchildren;
five step-grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

In 1980 Mr. and Mrs. Schneider moved to West Tisbury on Martha's
Vineyard, where they converted an old barn into a living space. The
elaborate garden that Mrs. Schneider began planting outside, with a
locust-wood gazebo and a lush array of blossoms surrounding a pond,
eventually became something of a tourist attraction. It was a sight,
the garden writer for The Boston [Massachusetts] Globe, Carol Stocker,
once wrote, "that Monet would have loved."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/arts/27schneider.html?_r=1&ref=obit...