Happy (late) 80th, Patricia MacLachlan! (1986 Newbery Medalist: "Sarah, Plain and Tall")

[leno...@yahoo.com]

Her birthday was on March 3rd.

Born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, she lives in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, and her office is/was at Smith College, Northampton, MA.


http://biography.jrank.org/pages/2148/MacLachlan-Patricia-1938.html
(awards & booklist)

Excerpt:

...A character in Arthur, for the Very First Time provided the seed for MacLachlan's best-known work, Sarah, Plain and Tall. Aunt Mag in Arthur was a mail-order bride (a woman who, in past times, attained a husband by answering a newspaper advertisement), as was a distant relative of MacLachlan's. In Sarah, Plain and Tall the title character answers a newspaper advertisement and as a result goes to visit a lonely widower and his children on the midwestern prairie. When Sarah arrives, the children take to her immediately and hope she will stay and marry their father. Considered a poignant and finely wrought tale, Sarah, Plain and Tall garnered widespread critical acclaim; MacLachlan received a Newbery Medal for the novel in 1986. Margery Fisher, a Growing Point contributor, deemed the book a "small masterpiece."

"My mother told me early on about the real Sarah," stated MacLachlan in her Newbery Medal acceptance speech, "who came from the coast of Maine to the prairie to become a wife and mother to a close family member…. So the fact of Sarah was there for years, though the book began as books often do, when the past stepped on the heels of the present; or backward, when something now tapped something then." Shortly before two of her children were to leave for college, MacLachlan's parents took the family on a trip to the prairie where they, and MacLachlan, were born. This trip made the connection between the past and the present more evident to both MacLachlan and her mother, who was beginning to lose her memory because of Alzheimer's disease.

"When I began Sarah," continued MacLachlan in her speech, "I wished for several things and was granted something unexpected. Most of all I wished to write my mother's story with spaces, like the prairie, with silences that could say what words could not…. But books, like children, grow and change, borrowing bits and pieces of the lives of others to help make them who and what they are. And in the end we are all there, my mother, my father, my husband, my children, and me. We gave my mother better than a piece of her past. We gave her the same that Anna and Caleb and Jacob received—a family."...

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/mining-memories-patricia-maclachlan/
(interview from 2017)

https://www.google.com/search?ei=3xGgWrPaBsH0swWEtZjACw&q=patricia+maclachlan+interview&oq=patricia+maclachlan+interview&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i22i30k1.8425.9877.0.10148.9.4.0.5.5.0.173.448.2j2.4.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..0.9.483...0.0.c21wB7gJkpQ
(more interviews)

https://www.google.com/search?ei=ERKgWt7sDpKSsAX_kL3wCg&q=patricia+maclachlan+kirkus&oq=patricia+maclachlan+kirkus&gs_l=psy-ab.3..33i160k1l2.940.1994.0.2210.7.7.0.0.0.0.111.662.5j2.7.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..0.7.659...0j0i67k1j0i22i30k1.0.9WXiPztpH4k
(Kirkus reviews)

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/29182.Patricia_MacLachlan
(reader reviews)

https://www.google.com/search?q=patricia+maclachlan&source=lnms&tbm=vid&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwieub7dz9rZAhUSCawKHX9ID64Q_AUIDSgE&biw=1280&bih=838
(videos)

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0533676/
(filmography)


Writings
FOR CHILDREN

The Sick Day (picture book), illustrated by William Pene Du Bois, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1979.

Arthur, for the Very First Time (novel), illustrated by Lloyd Bloom, Harper (New York, NY), 1980.

Moon, Stars, Frogs, and Friends, illustrated by Tomie de Paola, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1980.

Through Grandpa's Eyes (picture book), illustrated by Deborah Ray, Harper (New York, NY), 1980.

Cassie Binegar (novel), Harper (New York, NY), 1982.

Mama One, Mama Two (picture book), illustrated by Ruth Lercher Bornstein, Harper (New York, NY), 1982.

Tomorrow's Wizard, illustrated by Kathy Jacobi, Harper (New York, NY), 1982.

Seven Kisses in a Row (picture book), illustrated by Maria Pia Marrella, Harper (New York, NY), 1983.

Unclaimed Treasures (novel), Harper (New York, NY), 1984.

Sarah, Plain and Tall (novel), Harper (New York, NY), 1985.

The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt (novel), Harper (New York, NY), 1988.

Journey, Delacorte Press (New York, NY), 1991.

Three Names, illustrated by Alexander Pertzoff, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1991.

Baby, Delacorte Press (New York, NY), 1993.

All the Places to Love, paintings by Mike Wimmer, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1994.

Skylark (sequel to Sarah, Plain and Tall), HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1994.

What You Know First, engravings by Barry Moser, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1995.

Caleb's Story (sequel to Skylark), Joanna Cotler Books (New York, NY), 2001.

(With daughter, Emily MacLachlan) Painting the Wind, illustrated by Katy Schneider, Joanna Cotler Books, (New York, NY), 2003.

(With Emily MacLachlan) Bittle, illustrated by Dan Yaccarino, Joanna Cotler Books (New York, NY), 2004.

More Perfect than the Moon (sequel to Caleb's Story), Joanna Cotler Books (New York, NY), 2004.

Who Loves Me?, illustrated by Amanda Shepherd, Joanna Cotler Books (New York, NY), 2005.

(With Emily MacLachlan) Once I Ate a Pie, illustrated by Katy Schneider, Joanna Cotler Books (New York, NY), 2006.