ADVENTURE

= = =__ Illustrator James Ransome __= "The Children's Book Council named James E. Ransome as one of 75 authors and illustrators everyone should know. Currently a member of the Society of Illustrators, Ransome has received both the Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration and the IBBY Honor Award for his book //The Creation// (Holiday House Inc). He has also received a Coretta Scott King Honor Award for Illustration for //Uncle Jed's Barbershop// (Simon & Schuster), which was selected as an ALA Notable Book and is currently being shown as a feature on Reading Rainbow. //How Many Stars in the Sky?// (San Val Inc.) and //Sweet Clara// and the //Freedom Quilt// (Random House Children’s Books) were also Reading Rainbow selections. PBS's Storytime featured his book //The Old Dog// (HarperCollins). Ransome has exhibited works in group and solo shows throughout the country and received the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance award for his book //The Wagon// (HarperCollins). In 1999 //Let My People Go// (Simon & Schuster) received the NAACP Image Award for Illustration and //Satchel Paige// (Simon & Schuster) was reviewed in Bank Street College of Education's "The Best Children's Books of the Year." In 2001 James received the Rip Van Winkle Award from the School Library Media Specialists of Southeast New York for the body of his work. //How Animals Saved the People// (HarperCollins) received the SEBA (Southeastern Book Association) Best Book of the Year Award in 2002, and the Vermont Center for the Book chose //Visiting Day// as one of the top 10 diversity books of 2002. In 2004 James was recognized by the local art association when he received the Dutchess County Executive Arts Award for an Individual Artist. He has completed several commissioned murals for the Children's Museum in Indianapolis, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati and the Hemphill Branch Library in Greensboro, N.C. He created a historical painting commissioned by a jury for the Paterson, N.J., Library and a poster for the 50th Anniversary Celebration of 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown vs. the Board of Education. His traveling exhibit, “Visual Stories,” has been touring the United States since 2003. His work is part of both private and public children's book art collections. He lives in Rhinebeck, N.Y., with his wife, Lesa Cline Ransome, a writer of children's books. They have collaborated on a number of books together, the first being //Satchel Paige//. Others include //Major Taylor// (Simon & Schuster), //Quilt Alphabet// (Holiday House Inc.), //Quilt Counting// (North-South Books) and //Pele// (Random House Children’s Books). They have four children."[] =__ Illustrator Chris Van Dusen__ =
 * Definition**- The adventure novel is a genre of novels that has adventure, an exciting undertaking involving risk and physical danger, as its main theme.

"Chris Van Dusen writes: “I was born in Portland, Maine, on St. Patrick’s Day, 1960. As a child, my brothers and I would spend hours drawing pictures. We didn’t have video games or computers to entertain us, so we drew instead. One of my brothers would sketch intricate war scenes. Another would draw animals so realistic you’d swear they were breathing. My specialty was aliens, robots and monsters. “Dr. Seuss and Robert McCloskey were my heroes. I loved the rhythm of Dr. Seuss’ words and I was fascinated by the meticulous detail of Robert McCloskey’s illustrations. I had no idea back then that I’d end up writing and illustrating children’s books when I grew up. “After high school, I studied fine art at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth and graduated with a BFA in 1982. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do. First I was a waiter, and then I was offered a part-time job at a magazine for teenagers. Eventually I started drawing cartoons and illustrations for the magazine and my career as an illustrator was born. “For more than 10 years I worked as a freelance illustrator specializing in art for kids. I was doing mostly editorial work, and my illustrations appeared in magazines like //Nickelodeon, Family Fun// and //Disney Adventures.// One day I started thinking about drawing a picture of a boat stuck high up in a tree. I thought that would be a really funny and intriguing illustration. At the same time, a refrain kept running through my head—“Mr. Magee and his little dog, Dee / Hopped in the car and drove down to the sea.” The combination of these two things eventually became my first book, Down to the Sea with Mr. Magee (Chronicle), which was published in 2000. Since then I’ve written and illustrated A Camping Spree with Mr. Magee(Chronicle) (2003) and If I Built a Car(Puffin)(2005), and I’ve had a ball illustrating Kate DiCamillo’s Mercy Watson series (Candlewick)."[] =**__Author Nelle Harper Lee__**= Lee was born in Monroeville on April 28, 1926, the youngest child of Amasa Coleman Lee, a lawyer, and Frances Finch. She denies that the story of //To Kill a Mockingbird// is autobiographical, but her fiction was certainly influenced and shaped by her childhood experiences, shared with a brother and two sisters and fellow author-to-be [|Truman Capote], a frequent summer visitor to Monroeville. As she described this period of her life in a 1965 interview, "We had to use our own devices in our play, for our entertainment. We didn't have much money. . . . We didn't have toys, nothing was done for us, so the result was that we lived in our imagination most of the time. We devised things; we were readers and we would transfer everything we had seen on the printed page to the backyard in the form of high drama." Lee attended the public grammar school and high school in Monroeville. She developed an interest in writing during her childhood and continued to write when she attended [|Huntingdon College] ([|Montgomery], Alabama) from 1944 through 1945. In 1945, she transferred to the [|University of Alabama] in [|Tuscaloosa] to study law, but left in 1949 without completing her degree. While at Alabama Lee wrote columns, feature stories, and satires for the university newspaper and literary publications. In 1949 she left Alabama to pursue a literary career in New York."[] =**__Illustrator Rudolph Belarski__**= Belarski’s professional career started with a simple illustration on a whitewashed wall at a Dupont, Pennsylvania coal processing plant. Once the artwork was discovered his bosses set him to painting safety posters while still in his teens. At the age of 21 he enrolled at the [|Pratt Institute] in [|Brooklyn], New York to fine tune his enormous talents. The management at Pratt Institute was so impressed with his talents, in 1929, several years after he had graduated, Belarski was invited back to teach commercial art. It was in the late 20’s that [|pulp magazines] beckoned while he was still instructing at the Pratt. Pulpwood magazines had a voracious appetite for artwork, as newsstands were filled monthly with their provocative four-color covers. His first covers were destined for the air pulps being published by [|Dell]. Aviation covers dominated Belarski’s easel with only a few exceptions until the mid-30’s when he started doing covers for [|Ned Pines] and the [|Thrilling Group] of titles. The number of titles being produced by Thrilling far exceeded those being produced by Dell, and Rudolph Belarski was one of the main illustrators for the publisher. Early in 1937 [|Frank A. Munsey Company], publisher of [|//Argosy//] and several detective titles, commissioned Belarski for their magazines, while still hard at work on covers for Thrilling. It was during busy times that Belarski would split his time between New York and cabins in Maine or Canada. Painting covers in the light of day while camping. Sometimes polishing off a canvas and shipping it out in a cardboard box overnight. During World War II, Belarski continued to send work in to [|Ned Pines], and also entertained troops overseas in British hospitals. Between paper shortages during the war and a shrinking market for pulps, Belarski made the partial jump to paperback covers for [|Popular Library], also owned by Pines. It was late in 1951 that Belarski made the jump to strictly paperbacks, forever leaving the ragged edged pulpwood magazines behind. It’s a testament to Belarski’s talent that avid collectors of both paperbacks and pulps value his work highly."[| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolph_Belarski] =**__Author Harold Sherman__**= "Harold Morrow Sherman was born on July 13, 1898, in Traverse City, Michigan. He studied at the University of Michigan for a short amount of time, then moved to Detroit to work for the Ford Motor Company. He married Martha Bain on September 26, 1920, and had two daughters: Mary and Marcia. In 1921, Harold worked as a reporter for The Marion Chronicle in Indiana. He moved to New York City in 1924 to write several popular boys' sports and adventure books (notably the Tahara series) and to produce two plays on Broadway. The Sherman family spent the 1950s and early 1960s in Hollywood, writing for television and lecturing on his most recent work. He died on August 19, 1987."He wrote //Call of the Land//.[] Martti Löfbergs father was the owner of a sizeable sporting goods store, importing [|bicycles] from [|Chemnitz], and the son was planned to enter the family business. However he death of his father and subsequent bankruptcy of the sporting goods store liberated Martti to pursue his literary career. During his heyday Marton Taiga was one of the best selling writers, if not //the// highest earner of them, but self effacing to a fault, and thus nearly completely unknown to the general public as a person beyond his pseudonymous works. His good friend [|Aarne Haapakoski] was a major influence on him, and he in turn influenced other authors such as [|Mika Waltari], whose "Komisario Palmu" character drew significantly on Löfbergs police character William J. Kairala. The Kairala stories were published under the pseudonym M. Levä. Another long running character of his was the intrepid newspaper reporter Kid Barrow (known by his nickname "Carrot"); a [|Tintinesque] character." He wrote //Mustan Lipun Ritarit//.[]
 * "Rudolph Belarski** (born 27 May 1900 in [|Dupont, Pennsylvania] - died 24 December 1983) was a renown artist of [|pulp magazine], [|paperback] and [|men's adventure] magazine covers.
 * __ Author Martti Löfberg __**
 * "Martti Erik Hjalmar Löfberg** (March 5, 1907 - February 1969) was a successful [|Finnish] [|pulp fiction] author, especially in the 1930s and the 1940s. Though writing his adventure stories, [|science fiction] and mystery novels under a long list of pseudonyms, the one he was best known for was **Marton Taiga**.