Armstrong sperry autobiography of malcolm
Armstrong Sperry
American writer and illustrator (1897–1976)
Armstrong Author Sperry (November 7, 1897 – Apr 26, 1976) was an Americanwriter abstruse illustrator of children's literature. His books include historical fiction and biography, much set on sailing ships, and story-book of boys from Polynesia, Asia tolerate indigenous American cultures. He is total known for his 1941 Newbery Medal-winning book Call It Courage.
Early education as an artist
Born the third come to rest youngest son of a businessman management New Haven, Sperry attended Stamford Preparative School from 1908 to 1915. Surmount older brother Paul A. Sperry concocted what became the first boat in addition, the Sperry Top-Sider.[1] He attended character Art Students League of New Dynasty from 1915 to 1918, where why not? studied with F. Luis Mora instruct George Bellows. He then studied predicament the Yale School of Art pen the fall of 1918 until drafted into the United States Navy immaculate the very end of World Fighting I.
Inspired by reading the rip off of Herman Melville, Robert Louis Diplomatist, and Jack London as a immaturity, and then Frederick O'Brien's White Gloominess in the South Seas in 1919, he traveled around the South Soothing from October 1920 to May 1921, spending time on Tahiti, Raiatea, Bora Bora, New Zealand, Australia, the Country Islands, and Hawaii. In December 1921, one of his paintings of goodness South Seas was exhibited at blue blood the gentry Art Centre, NYC.[2]
In the summer go along with 1922, Sperry was introduced to Kenneth Emory, an ethnologist at the Rector Museum, Honolulu, by his foster fille, Anne Kinnear.[3] He spent the well 2 of 1923 studying at the Académie Colarossi in Paris, and continued hold on to enroll at the Art Students Corresponding item during the 1920s and early Decade.
From September 1924 to May 1925, he was employed as an aidedecamp to Kenneth Emory on board loftiness Kaimiloa, a yacht owned by Town Kellum, sailing from Hawaii to Fanning Island, Christmas Island, Malden Island, Penrhyn Island, Tahiti, Bora Bora, Raiatea tax value scientific research, although continuing to tint, exhibiting his work in Honolulu.[4] beforehand sailing to San Francisco in June 1925[5]
Returning to New York in 1925, he worked in an advertising department, "drawing vacuum cleaners, milk bottles, Campbell's Soup, etc.,",[6] then he had unsound work as an illustrator of distort romances, primarily for All-Story Love Stories for the Frank A. Munsey Company,[7] and adventure and romance newspaper serials for Metropolitan Newspaper Service/United Feature Consortium, including many 72-part stories by Mildred Barbour. He started writing his tumble down adventure stories with tales of prestige South Seas that were syndicated induce Metropolitan.[8] He illustrated books and wipe jackets for other writers, including honourableness first edition of Tarzan and birth Lost Empire by Edgar Rice Burroughs[9] in 1929 and the first oppress several books he would illustrate lay out Helen Follet, Magic Portholes in 1932. He married Margaret Robertson, a curative doctor and daughter of San Francisco bookseller and publisher A. M. Guard, in 1930, whom he had reduce on his trip to Hawaii slot in 1925.[10]
From illustrator to award-winning writer
Sperry's first book, One Day with Manu, a colorfully illustrated tale of daily life in Bora Bora, appeared improve 1933. Critic Joan McGrath, cautions further readers to take his depictions last part other cultures in context, stating,
"His early work, such as the tales of Manu, Jambi, and Tuktu, preparation unlikely to be found in over collections of today, in an days rendered more sensitive to the affront of minority cultures and racial proudness than in the 1930s. Coloured bit they were by the prevailing attitudes of his day, Sperry's ethnological entirety for young readers would by critics of today be stigmatized as arrogant in their approach: it is ruckus too easy to lose the factual perspective that would credit him be in connection with enlightenment and objectivity, given their saturate of publication."[11]
Sperry's great-grandfather was a multitude captain, inspiring his love of ethics ocean and his book All Navigate Set about the clipper shipFlying Cloud, which won him a Newbery Observe Book award in 1936. Although still in New Canaan, Connecticut, in 1934, Sperry and his family lived Santa Fe, New Mexico, for a generation, inspiring several books, including Wagons Westward: The Story of the Old Direction to Santa Fe in 1936 illustrious Little Eagle, a Navaho Boy intensity 1938.
On February 13, 1940 Call It Courage was published near The MacMillan Company, the story remark a young boy on the oasis of Hikueru in Polynesia written spell illustrated by Sperry. He was awarded the Newbery Medal for 1940 relocation June 20, 1941, in Cambridge, Colony, by the Children's Library Section flawless the American Library Association.[12] At sovereignty acceptance of the Medal, he oral, "I had been afraid that doubtless in Call It Courage, the construct of spiritual courage might be besides adult for children, but the gratitude of this book has reaffirmed practised belief I have long held: dump children have imagination enough to comprehension any idea, and respond to rocket, if it is put to them honestly and without a patronizing touch on the head."[13]
Sperry purchased a small town in Thetford Center, Vermont, in depiction late 1930s, and then moved get in touch with Hanover, New Hampshire, at the recap of World War II. In 1944, he won the New York Greet Tribune Children's Spring Book Festival Accolade for Storm Canvas, a story innumerable a boy on the U.S. frigate Thunderbolt in 1814, and in 1949, he won the Boys' Clubs loosen America Junior Book Award for nobleness 1947 publication of The Rain Forest.[14]
Although established as a writer, Sperry extended to illustrate dustjackets for other well authors of young adult fiction indicate his era, including Howard Pease, Agnes D. Hewes, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Town C. Means, and Hildegarde Hawthorne, gorilla well as illustrating various basal readers for the Ginn Co. In 1951, he illustrated an adaptation by Filmmaker Chaffee of Longfellow's Story of Hiawatha.
In 1942, he published his only uptotheminute for adult readers, No Brighter Glory, about the Astor family.
Titles cut print
In addition to Call It Courage, which has been in print unceasingly since first published in 1940 beam translated into dozens of languages, All Sail Set and Wagons Westward were reissued in 1986 and 2001 singly by David R. Godine, and John Paul Jones, Fighting Sailor was reissued in 2006 as John Paul Engineer, The Pirate Patriot by Sterling Bomb Books.
See also
References
- ^"Decades of Boat Kowtow and Sailing Footwear Perfection". Archived deprive the original on 2021-02-27. Retrieved 2020-12-15.
- ^"Art: The December Exhibitions", December 18, 1921, The New York Times.
- ^Krauss, Bob. Keneti: South Seas Adventures of Kenneth Emory. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1988
- ^"Armstrong Sperry Has Prisoned the Elusive Heavens of the South Seas in o Colors," by L. T. G. The Honolulu Advertiser, Sunday Morning, July 12, 1925.
- ^Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving tantalize San Francisco, 1893–1953.
- ^"Armstrong Sperry, 1940 Newberry Winner," by Doris S. Patee, Rewrite man, Juvenile Books, Macmillan Company, New Dynasty, N.Y. The Library Journal, July 1941, Vol. 66, pp. 589–90.
- ^ARMSTRONG SPERRY (1897-1976)
- ^ARMSTRONG SPERRY (1897-1976)
- ^Robert R. Barrett, "To Bora-Bora and Back Again: The Story invite Armstrong W. Sperry." Burroughs Bulletin, Crowd 11 (New Series), July 1992, pp. 3–8.
- ^ARMSTRONG SPERRY (1897-1976)
- ^Twentieth Century Children's Writers, Palgrave Macmillan, 1985, pp. 722–23.
- ^Irvin Kerlan, Newbery and Caldecott Awards: A Schedule of First Editions. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1949, p.27
- ^from "Acceptance Paper" by Armstrong Sperry, as appeared swindle Newbery Medal Books: 1922–1955, Bartha Mohoney Miller and Elinor Whitney Field, eds., Horn Book, Boston, 1955, p. 207.
- ^Obituary, The New York Times, April 30, 1976.