Food, Shelter, Clothing, Kindness

"FALLS CHURCH, Va. — E.L. Konigsburg [February 10, 1930 – April 19, 2013], an author who twice won one of the top honors for children's literature, has died. She was 83.

     Her son Paul Konigsburg says the longtime Florida resident died Friday at a hospital in Falls Church, Va., where she'd been living for the past few years with another son. She had suffered a stroke a week before she died.
     She won the John Newbery Medal in 1997 for her book The View from Saturday and in 1968 for From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. The Newbery is one of the top honors for children's literature. Her family says she wrote 16 children's novels and illustrated 3 picture books.
     Her first book, Jennifer, Hecate, MacBeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth was also a Newbery honor book in 1968, making her the only author to be a winner and runner-up in the same year.
     In 1997, the Newbery committee called her story of a sixth grade Academic Bowl team and their coach 'a unique, jubilant tour de force characterized by good humor, positive relationships, distinctive personalities and brilliant story telling.'"
— Huffington Post Read more…

"[Scholastic Books:] Why is it important to do random acts of kindness?

I think it's important to experience kindness, so that you can experience it more in the future. I believe that patterns of emotional behavior are set down before adolescence. And I think that if you have not observed kindness, you will not recognize it. You have to experience kindness in order to be kind. And you have to lay down those emotional pathways.
     For example, they're finding that kids coming out of those awful orphanages in Romania have never experienced kindness. When they're adopted, they cannot bond with people and experience kindness, because the pathway has never been laid down inside their heads. I think that as our population grows, it becomes increasingly important to be kind."
— E.L. Konigsburg (From an interview with Scholastic Books)
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You can get all of E.L. Konigsburg's books here...