International folklorist Barbara J.K. Walker, 85 (in Jan. 2007)
Lenona
All I could find was a measly notice of fewer than 60 words. She lived
in Lubbock, Texas.
http://lubbockonline.com/stories/022207/obi_022207065.shtml
Anyway, here's what I posted on her 85th birthday in 2006:
Her full name is Barbara Jeanne Kerlin Walker.
She lives in Lubbock, Texas. (Not to be confused with cookbook author
Barbara M. Walker!)
She was nominated for a Caldecott Medal twice for "How the Hare Told
the Truth about His Horse," and "New Patches for Old." She was also
commissioned by UNICEF to compile an international children's joke
book
in the 1970s.
I remember her best for "Teeny-Tiny and the Witch-Woman" (1975), which
is similar to "Hansel and Gretel," but with three boys - Teeny-Tiny,
In-the-Middle, and Big-One. The story includes the folktale device of
throwing small objects behind you that grow into large objects. The
book has pretty eerie illustrations by the British artist Michael
Foreman - and it was just released this fall on DVD!
Her works include: "Bible Tales in Turkey," correspondence with Verna
Aardema, "Folktales Around the World," "Just Say Hic!", "Korolu, the
Singing Bandit," "Laughing Together: Giggles and Grins from Around the
Globe," "Light from Central Africa: Dilemma Tales for Today's Teens,"
"Nigerian Folk Tales," and "A Treasury of the Turkish Folktales for
Children."
http://special.lib.umn.edu/findaid/xml/CLRC-1527.xml
("Barbara K. Walker Papers" - includes short bio and long
bibliography - not quite complete)
http://images.google.com/images?q=%22barbara+k+walker%22&ie=ISO-8859-1&hl=en&biw=1440&bih=710
(a few book covers)
I only hope her retellings about the Hodja (she spells it "Hoca") are
truly funny when I find them - several translations I've found are
very dry. One I remember that was VERY good was told by I.G. Edmonds
in
"Trickster Tales."
From Contemporary Authors:
"Barbara K. Walker and her husband, Warren S. Walker, have been
working since 1961 on the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral
Narrative. Since 1980, she has been curator of the collection, which
was donated in 1970
to Texas Tech University and moved to the university library in 1980.
The collection includes well over three thousand folktales in Turkish,
two- thirds of which have been translated into English. The Walkers
began collecting the folktales, children's games, rhymes, and riddles
in rural Turkey in 1961 when Warren Walker was Fulbright lecturer in
American literature at the University of Ankara, and they plan to
continue collecting 'as long as we live.'.................Because her
husband shares her enthusiasm for internationalism, their house has
been "home away from home" for visitors from all parts of the world,
including Botswana, China, Czechoslovakia, England, India, Japan,
Malaysia, Nigeria, Switzerland, West Germany, Yugoslavia, Turkey, and
Zaire. 'And coming at all hours of the day are children, who regard
[me] as both live-in storyteller and branch librarian.'
" 'To Set Them Free: The Early Years of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk' was
adopted by the Turkish Ministry of Education for use in all Turkish
schools, and texts of the first twelve of Barbara Walker's Turkish-
based children's books were adopted by the Turkish Ministry of
Education for use in Turkey's English-as-a-Second-Language school
program."
Lenona.