Cameron, Ann

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Ann Cameron

Personal

Born October 21, 1943, in Rice Lake, WI; daughter of William Angus (a lawyer) and Lolita (a teacher; maiden name, Lofgren) Cameron; married Bill Cherry (a congressional committee staff director), 1990; children: Angela, Cristi (stepdaughters). Education: Radcliffe College, B.A. (with honors), 1965; University of Iowa, M.F.A., 1972. Politics: Democrat.

Addresses

Home—Calle Principal, Panajachel, Solola, Guatemala. Agent—Ellen Levine Literary Agency, 15 East 26th St., Suite 1801, New York, NY 10010.

Career

Writer, editor, and teacher. Supervisor of the Panajachel, Guatemala municipal library; director of Amigos de la Biblioteca (a fundraising organization that supports the Panajachel municipal library).

Member

Authors Guild, Authors League of America.

Awards, Honors

MacDowell Colony fellow, 1968; guest at Yaddo Colony, 1968; grant from National Endowment for the Humanities, 1974; Irma Simonton Black Award, 1981, for The Stories Julian Tells; Parents' Choice Award, 1986, and Selectors' Choice, Wilson Library Bulletin, 1988, for More Stories Julian Tells; Children's Book Award, Child Study Children's Book Committee at Bank Street College, 1988, and Addams Award, 1989, both for The Most Beautiful Place in the World; Blue Ribbon book, Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, 1995, for The Stories Huey Tells; finalist, National Book Award, 1999, for The Secret Life of Amanda K. Woods; named a Notable Wisconsin Author, Wisconsin Library Association, 2003.

Writings

The Seed, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1975.

Harry, the Monster, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1980.

The Stories Julian Tells, illustrated by Ann Strugnell, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1981.

More Stories Julian Tells, illustrated by Ann Strugnell, Knopf (New York, NY), 1986.

Julian's Glorious Summer, illustrated by Dora Leder, Random House (New York, NY), 1987.

Julian, Secret Agent, illustrated by Diane Allison, Random House (New York, NY), 1988.

The Most Beautiful Place in the World, illustrated by Thomas B. Allen, Knopf (New York, NY), 1988.

Julian, Dream Doctor, illustrated by Ann Strugnell, Random House (New York, NY), 1990.

The Stories Huey Tells, Knopf (New York, NY), 1995.

(Adapter) The Kidnapped Prince: The Life of OlaudahEquiano, introduction by Henry L. Gates, Knopf (New York, NY), 1995.

More Stories Huey Tells, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 1997.

The Secret Life of Amanda K. Woods, Puffin (New York, NY), 1999.

Gloria's Way, Foster/Farrar (New York, NY), 2000.

Gloria Rising, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 2002.

Colibri, Frances Foster Books (New York, NY), 2003.

Also author of introduction, The Angel Book, Balance House, 1978. Contributor of stories to Iowa Review and Northwest Review; contributor of an essay to Booktalk, published by the National Council of Teachers of English.

Sidelights

A highly acclaimed writer for young readers, Ann Cameron has turned the chapter book into something of an art form with her sprightly tales of Julian, his brother Huey, and their friend Gloria. As a critic for Kirkus Reviews noted in a 2002 review, Cameron has made it "her mission to impart life information to middle-graders." With the 2003 publication of Colibri, Cameron turned to more serious themes with a novel of kidnapping and abuse set in the lush Guatemalan countryside. A finalist for the National Book Award, Cameron has been a resident of a highland village in Guatemala for more than two decades. "I try to write about characters who have inner abundance—sympathy, imagination, inventiveness, hope, intelligence—and who make happy lives despite modest outer resources," Cameron once said. Cameron's children's fiction is popular worldwide, and has been published in France, England, Canada, Japan, and South Africa, as well as in the United States. She is best known for the series of books she introduced with The Stories Julian Tells. These stories feature Julian, a young black boy, described by Booklist's Julie Corsaro as "energetic, engaging, and intelligent"; his brother Huey; his best friend Gloria; and his wise and loving parents. When Julian's creativity and enthusiasm lead him into trouble, his parents help him toward self-discovery, moral growth, and pride in his achievements.

Cameron once explained that The Stories Julian Tells "was inspired by some stories a friend of mine, Julian DeWette, told me about his childhood." DeWette, a South African, and his brother had once eaten a pudding his father had made as a special present for their mother. Cameron's version ends with the two boys hiding under their bed from their angry father. The story reminded Cameron that much of childhood is spent trying to fathom the rules of adults and living up to one's own developing sense of morality.

Cameron said that she has never believed in the traditional advice to writers: "write what you know." "We all know a great deal," observed the author, "which neither interests nor inspires us. Write what you care about," she advises, "and the force of your caring will lead you to questioning, imagining, learning—the opening of the heart and mind that lead to the best writing."

Because she had friends of diverse cultures and races as a child, Cameron once remarked, "I grew up with an almost instinctive conviction that people quite different from me would like me. . . . It has brought me wonderful and enduring friendships and a tremendous enrichment of my understanding of life." She more recently added, "I see my character Julian as an Everychild, a child whose hopes and mishaps children everywhere can understand. Letters from young readers of many races and cultures saying his adventures remind them of themselves support me in viewing Julian this way. As an author I am more interested in what we have in common as human beings than in the things that divide us. I'm interested in how we conquer our hatreds and our fears, our lack of love, and our lack of hope."

Wisconsin Youth

Cameron grew up in rural Wisconsin in the late 1940s and 1950s, spending lots of time alone, riding her pony, fishing, looking for Indian arrowheads, and, as she recalled, dreaming "a lot about what the land was like before the arrival of Europeans. Motivating these dreams was an equal mix of my love of nature, interest in Native Americans, and dislike of school. I knew Native Americans had not had to spend nine months a year in school, and that in itself made me wish I could have been one of them."

Cameron's parents were traditional, uninfluenced by the child-rearing theories of Dr. Spock, and given to repeating, "Children should be seen and not heard." They had great curiosity about other cultures, great respect for learning, and faith that education and hard work were the keys to a good life. "I respected their values," Cameron said "but I resented their idea that children should be second-class citizens within the family." In School Library Journal the author described her family environment as often being an "icicle kingdom of silence," and she grew up determined to "say . . . the things most important" to her.

Although she disliked grade school, Cameron read constantly. She once related, "I loved books about characters who struggled to make a happy life for themselves, and who succeeded. I knew from my own childhood that often I wasn't happy, that often even adults did not lead happy lives. The books I loved best taught me to hope, and helped me to believe life could be, if not all good, at least mostly good and even wonderful. Books—especially fiction and autobiography—gave me energy. They were a kind of magic—nothing but paper and ink and a little glue, and then you opened their covers and found they held life inside them. That's why from a very early age (about third grade) I wanted to be a writer—the person who captures the positive energy of life, wraps it in paper, and gives it, all shimmering and forever bright, to others."

Cameron earned a bachelor's degree with honors at Radcliffe College. There she heard Martin Luther King Jr. speak and participated in civil rights demonstrations. In her senior year, she studied poetry with the poet Robert Lowell, who encouraged her to write, calling one of her poems "magical." Lowell advised her to go to New York to work in publishing after college as the best way to develop her writing. So in 1965 she moved to New York, getting a job as an editorial assistant in the trade department of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

From Editor to Author

Cameron said of this experience, "It was a thrill to work in publishing, to get a thank you letter for some reviews of Virginia Woolf's essays from her husband, Leonard Woolf; to read the correspondence in which Alfred Harcourt had rejected Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury; to see and meet many famous editors and authors—Lewis Mumford, Paula Fox, Anaïs Nin, Irving Howe; and to learn to edit books. However, after two and a half years in publishing, I thought it was time to take the leap into writing. I began an adult novel and on the basis of my incomplete manuscript received a fellowship for a master's degree in creative writing at the University of Iowa, plus invitations to the artists' colonies MacDowell and Yaddo for the summer of 1968. With fellowship and recognition heaped on me, I told my friend Paula Fox I felt like I was walking on God's hand. Paula responded, 'It's a very narrow hand.' She couldn't have been more right."

Cameron went on to explain about her time at the University of Iowa: "At Iowa I became overwhelmed by all I hadn't read, all I didn't know. My adult novel ground to a halt; I couldn't figure out how to organize my experience. What did I really have to say that other writers hadn't already said much better? In the midst of my discouragement, I remembered that children's books were short. 'At least I might be able to get through one,' I thought. My second attempt at a children's book—about a seed in the ground who hears a storm above her head and becomes afraid to grow—was published in 1975."

Cameron received her M.F.A. from the University of Iowa in 1972. She lived in Berkeley, California, for a year, and then returned to New York, working freelance as a manuscript reader for literary agents. She edited an archaeologist's thesis and worked as camp cook in the rain forest on a Mayan dig in Belize, Central America. She also evaluated the potential movie prospects of books for a Hollywood film company and worked for the Doubleday Book Clubs.

Breakthrough with "Julian" Stories

With The Stories Julian Tells Cameron's work began to receive wide recognition. According to Liz Waterland in Books for Keeps, the "Julian stories have been deservedly popular ever since they first appeared." Along with the pudding story, The Stories Julian Tells includes tales about making a first friend; cats that do gardening work; and Julian's attempt to grow tall by eating a fig tree's leaves, nearly killing the tree. More Stories Julian Tells provides five additional stories which, as David Gale noted in School Library Journal, "reflect incidents true to children." In this work, Julian learns the destructive effects of name-calling; discovers that his best friend, Gloria, really can move the sun; and sends a message in a bottle that unfortunately gets stuck very close to home.

Three of the "Julian" books present longer stories with chapters for young readers. Julian's Glorious Summer begins when his friend Gloria offers to help him learn to ride the new bike she received for her birthday. Julian can't tell her that he is afraid of falling, so he gives a false excuse for not riding. He pretends that his father is putting him to work, nights and days. When Julian persuades his father to give him work so that Gloria will believe his excuse, Dad responds with more work than Julian would prefer. Julian finally confides to his mother that he is afraid of falling off a bicycle. His parents then give him a bike for all the work he has done, and he learns to ride and enjoy it. A Booklist critic appreciated Cameron's "well-paced plot" and "fine characterizations of Julian's struggles."

Julian, Secret Agent finds Julian, Gloria, and Huey pretending to be "crimebusters." They decide to track down the criminals on the most-wanted posters they see at the post office, but their visits to the supermarket and hospital instead give them opportunities to rescue a dog from a hot car and a child from a fountain. When the secret agents visit a café, they are certain the cook is a wanted bank robber. It takes the police chief himself to convince the children that the "bank robber" is really his son! A critic for Junior Bookshelf praised Cameron's "enviable knack of weaving intriguing stories out of small incidents."

Julian is busy sleuthing again in Julian, Dream Doctor. This time, however, Julian is trying to figure out what his father wants for his birthday. Julian and Huey first try to use the brainwave machine they've made, and when that fails, they prompt their sleeping father to tell them his "biggest dream," which turns out to be "two snakes. Big ones." When the boys present Dad with the gift they worked so hard to find, Dad is horrified and must confess that snakes are his biggest nightmare. A critic for Junior Bookshelf asserted that "Julian's parents are a bit too good to be true." In her Booklist review, however, Corsaro appreciated Cameron's ability to develop "well-realized characters and situations."

Settles in Guatemala

In 1983 Cameron traveled to Guatemala to visit a New York filmmaker, Pablo Zavala, who was a close friend. She said, "I had always wanted to immerse myself in another culture. We have such brief, narrow lives and learn so little of all the ways to experience being human. Each culture sees the world and the meaning of life with slightly different eyes. I wanted to grow, to see things more than one way, to find more than one way of seeing myself."

Cameron further related: "I went to Guatemala for a short vacation, but with the hope that I might stay. In the highland town of Panajachel, which is on the shore of an enormous lake overshadowed by majestic volcanoes, I found a new home. I was in the garden of a Panajachel restaurant, when I looked down into my coffee cup and saw it full of the golden reflections of flowers, and knew this was the place I wanted to stay."

Her adopted country appears often in her fiction since the 1980s. "I am sure that my writing has been influenced by a long time spent in a poor country, where only the very rich live in the equivalent of the U.S. 'consumer culture,'" the author said. After dividing her time between Guatemala and New York for six years, Cameron met Bill Cherry, the staff director of a congressional subcommittee on agriculture, in 1989. They were married in 1990, and since then have lived full-time in Guatemala.

"In 1993," Cameron said, "the mayor and city council of Panajachel named me unpaid supervisor of the town's public library. I was very honored by this trust from my adoptive community. In Guatemala, illiteracy is about eighty percent. The whole country has only a handful of very ill-equipped libraries. In public schools, children study without books, because parents have no money to buy them. Nationally, only thirty-eight percent of children attend school. Most of those who attend do not get beyond sixth grade."

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Cameron takes her work with her local library and with literacy issues as seriously as she does her writing, attempting through all three means to battle such staggering numbers of illiteracy and education rates. "With the help of U.S. donations, we are building the Panajachel library into a first-class library for students," Cameron has commented. "We've added over three thousand volumes in Spanish for children—plus new lights, windows, fans, and tables. The library is filled with children every day that it is open. Many older students come from other towns to use the library as well, and we are building a collection of university-level books for them."

The Most Beautiful Place in the World is set in a Guatemalan town much like Panajachel. As she wrote in School Library Journal, the character of the narrator of this book, a seven-year-old boy named Juan, is based on a boy Cameron knows. In The Most Beautiful Place in the World, Juan's father has abandoned the family, and when his mother finds a new husband, she is forced to leave Juan with his grandmother. His grandmother's house is already full of children, and Juan must help support the family by working as a shoe-shine boy. Juan works hard, but he cannot help wishing that he could go to school like the children he sees in the morning. He begins to teach himself to read by studying the street signs near the tourist office. After Juan relates his dream of going to school to his grandmother, she grants his wish, and Juan optimistically enters the first grade. As Ethel R. Twichell observed in Horn Book, this story provides an "unsentimental picture of Juan's hard life" as well as "a modest hope for his brighter future." Phillis Wilson concluded in Booklist that Juan tells his "bittersweet story with warmth and dignity."

In The Kidnapped Prince: The Life of Olaudah Equiano, a shortened, retold version of Olaudah Equiano's 1789 autobiography, Cameron gives children insight into the life of another child suffering hardship. Equiano was brutally kidnapped from Benin, Africa, and separated from his family when he was just eleven years old. He was subjected to forced labor in England, the United States, and a plantation in the West Indies, until, having learned to read and write, he managed to buy his way to freedom. Booklist's Hazel Rochman found Cameron's version "true to the spirit of the original."

Julian's Family and Friends

In 1995 Cameron allowed Huey, the younger brother of her popular Julian character, to have a voice of

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his own in The Stories Huey Tells. In this chapter book, six-year-old Huey invents banana spaghetti, gets in trouble in a restaurant where he is expected to eat all of a baked trout that keeps staring him in the eye, and plays a clever trick on his older brother. Trying to earn a little respect from Julian, Huey complains about the way his older brother treats him like a little kid, a common refrain of younger siblings. "He always acts like nothing I say is important," the six-year-old says of Julian. "Kids everywhere will recognize their fears, dreams, and jokes in Huey's daily adventures," predicted Booklist contributor Hazel Rochman. According to Horn Book reviewer Maeve Visser Knoth, Cameron tells about Huey's exploits "with her usual rich language, strong sense of childhood angst, and gentle humor."

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Huey returns, one year older, in More Stories Huey Tells. This time, Huey tries to resuscitate a dying sunflower plant with coffee, dig for buried treasure, and help his dad to quit smoking, among other things. Throughout the five stories, Cameron "writes without condescension," noted Hazel Rochmaninher Booklist review. The critic commented positively on the author's attempts to capture the small boy's feelings, finding them "subtle and complicated and sometimes profoundly moving." Other critics remarked upon Cameron's ability to write convincing tales about elementary-school-age children growing up. "In these simple stories," Horn Book critic Susan P. Bloom wrote, "Cameron doesn't opt for easy solutions or pat answers."

An eleven-year-old girl from Wisconsin is featured in Cameron's 1999 novel, The Secret Life of Amanda K. Woods, set in the 1950s. Young Amanda feels lonely after her best friend moves to another state. Wishing for more friends and for acceptance from her overbearing mother, the girl adapts new strategies for fitting in, actions that seem to go against her natural tendencies. Eventually, with help from her caring father and a kind teacher, Amanda charts a new course for herself, one that is "gracefully conveyed through quiet, contemplative narrative," observed a critic in Publishers Weekly. Comparing Amanda's tale to that of Julian, Booklist contributor John Peters claimed that Cameron "brings the same warm humor and deep understanding of human nature" to her story about the fifth grader. Peters continued his favorable assessment of the novel, calling The Secret Life of Amanda K. Woods a "perceptive, emotionally engaging novel."

Critics also responded positively to the role adults play in Cameron's 2000 chapter book, Gloria's Way. The book offers young readers the chance to see "children learn[ing] to address their problems with the help of wise adults who offer them good counsel while respecting the children enough to let them work out their own solutions," according to a Horn Book contributor. The friend of Julian and Huey Bates, Gloria tells her own stories in six chapters, showing how the young narrator solves the minor crises in her life with the welcomed advice from well-meaning grown-ups. After a parrot ruins the valentine she made for her mother, Gloria is encouraged by Mr. Bates to make another, while her own mother comforts her when the young girl fears Julian prefers playing with a new neighbor rather than her. Writing in Publishers Weekly, a critic noticed that "the parents step in, without seeming intrusive, like guardian angels to smooth out life's little wrinkles." Describing the book, a Kirkus Reviews contributor observed, "Gloria, a spunky kid who gets into some strange predicaments, finds out that her friends and wise, loving adults are good to have around when trouble beckons." More praise came from Booklist's Carolyn Phelan, who found the book a "delightful companion" to Cameron's earlier titles about Julian and Huey. And Anne Parker, writing in School Library Journal, thought that the book would "find an audience with children who like reassuring stories."

Gloria's adventures continue in Gloria Rising, where a meeting with a female astronaut inspires the youngster to set larger dreams for herself. At school, Gloria's new teacher does not take kindly to her no matter what Gloria does to please her. When Gloria tells the class about her lucky meeting with the astronaut, her teacher refuses to believe the story and goes on to embarrass Gloria in front of the entire class. It is only when the same astronaut makes a visit to Gloria's class that the teacher sees how wrong she was. According to Alicia Eames, writing in School Library Journal, "readers will . . . identify with all involved and cheer when these satisfying characters are satisfyingly vindicated." A contributor for Kirkus Reviews called the episodes in the book a "series of edifying encounters," and further noted that "Cameron's crisply direct advice . . . is right on." And though Gillian Engberg, writing in Booklist, found Cameron's messages "heavy," and her dialogue "sometimes stilted," she also thought that young readers would "connect with Gloria's fears and anger, and young astronaut wanna-bes will like the beautiful details about space."

With her 2003 novel, Colibri, Cameron, according to a Kirkus Reviews contributor, tells a "painful, beautiful, and ultimately triumphant" story of a young girl who defies all she knows to discover who she really is. Tzunun is twelve, a street-wise beggar in Guatemala whose "Uncle" takes her from village to village as they scrounge a miserable existence with the handouts she earns. Tzunun is a child with many names. Her Mayan name means "Humming-bird Star," and she has earned the Spanish nickname Colibri because of it. But "Uncle," the exsoldier and beggar who supposedly rescued her from a kidnapper who took her from a crowded bus when she was four, calls her Rosa. Consulting a fortuneteller who tells him the girl will bring him a fortune, he decided to keep her. In the eight years since, he has tried to convince Tzunun that her parents abandoned her because they were too poor to take care of her. But the girl still has vague memories of parents. When her guardian tries to use her to steal artwork from a church, things explode in his face. Tzunun goes to the priest and Uncle is arrested. Aided by a seer, Tzunun begins to learn the truth of her life; when Uncle escapes from jail, she must make one final confrontation to free herself of him and be reunited with her parents at long last.

This deeply felt book was highly praised by critics. Writing in School Library Journal, Marie Orlando noted that the author "layers her compelling story with vivid descriptions of setting." For Orlando, Colibri was a "well-written and engrossing read." Horn Book's Lauren Adams commended the "great detail" with which Cameron "paints the physical landscape," and concluded that the "novel's tone is serious but not somber; the brightly colored landscape of Tzunun's journey seems to promise her a better future." A contributor for Publishers Weekly similarly observed that Cameron "creates a melting pot of mixed values, religions, and races" in this "taut novel" which achieves "an almost hypnotic intensity." Kliatt's Claire Rosser found both pain and hope in this tale: "The plight of Colibri as a kidnapped child whose spirit has been nearly destroyed is painfully real, which is why her ability to reconnect to people who love and respect her is such a treasure for readers." And Booklist's Gillian Engberg found that "readers will be deeply moved by [Tzunun's] intense yearning for security, love, and integrity and her sense of a spiritual world that is felt but never fully known."

Cameron once described what it was like to be a writer: "Now that I've grown up, and become a writer, people say to me, 'I have a story for you'; or 'You could make a story out of that.' They seem to think that writers are like piggy banks, empty inside, and just waiting for some nice person to come along and put in a coin! But stories are not like that. My story will never be exactly like yours. I could never tell yours for you. Your story, if it's really the way you want to tell it, can never be wrong the way an arithmetic answer is wrong; and even if your mother, father, teacher or best friend doesn't understand it, it may be a good story. However, one part of a writer's job is to know when someone's criticism can help you improve your story—and to know when you've already got it as good as you can make it. Reading a lot is the best help for making your own writing better and making you a good judge of writing. Just as no one is likely to become an interesting musician if he's never listened to any music, no one is likely to become an interesting author without reading good and exciting books by the hundreds and thousands."

The author added, "It's not easy to write well—or to do anything else well. We are all born with inner resources, but it takes work to make use of them, and sometimes struggle against tremendous obstacles. It's astonishing and inspiring to me that so many of our greatest authors have overcome severe deprivation and sufferings of all sorts. I'd hope to emulate them and all the survivors and transcenders of the world—rather than the defeated who take out their frustration and disappointments on the next generation, and see others through the dark lenses of their own limitations."

As Cameron explained, "These later were epitomized for me on a school visit to a fourth grade class in Wisconsin. I told the students they could be authors, too, when they grew up. To my horror, the teacher immediately disagreed: 'No, nobody in this class could be an author!,' she said. (Before I left the class, one boy in it had developed a scene for me that I later used in Julian, Dream Doctor.)"

If you enjoy the works of Ann Cameron

If you enjoy the works of Ann Cameron, you might want to check out the following books:

Sharon Creech, The Wanderer, 2000.

Christopher Paul Curtis, The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963, 1995.

Hilary McKay, Saffy's Angel, 2002.

Cameron concluded, "I try to write about characters who haven't lost touch with their own inner abundance. I hope my characters can connect or reconnect children to the richness inside themselves."

Biographical and Critical Sources

BOOKS

Cameron, Ann, Julian, Dream Doctor, Random House (New York, NY), 1990.

Cameron, Ann, The Stories Huey Tells, Knopf (New York, NY), 1995.

Something about the Author Autobiography Series, Volume 20, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1995.

Ward, Martha E., and others, Authors of Books for Young People, 3rd ed., Scarecrow Press (Metuchen NJ), 1990.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 15, 1987, review of Julian's Glorious Summer, pp. 702-703; January 1, 1989, Phillis Wilson, review of The Most Beautiful Place in the World, p. 784; May 15, 1990, Julie Corsaro, review of Julian, Dream Doctor, p. 1797; January 1, 1995, Hazel Rochman, review of The Kidnapped Prince, p. 816; November 15, 1995, Hazel Rochman, review of The Stories Huey Tells, p. 559; April 15, 1997, Hazel Rochman, review of More Stories Huey Tells, p. 1429; April 15, 1998, John Peters, review of The Secret Life of Amanda K. Woods, p. 1444; February, 2000, Carolyn Phelan, review of Gloria's Way, p. 1110; February 15, 2002, Gillian Engberg, review of Gloria Rising, p. 1032; October 1, 2003, Gillian Engberg, review of Colibri, p. 324.

Books for Keeps, July, 1990, Liz Waterland, p. 9.

Boston Sunday Globe, September 20, 1998, Liz Rosenberg, "Three for Middle Readers and All Ages."

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, June, 1980; January, 1982; December, 1987; December, 1988; December, 1995; July, 1997; May, 1998; August, 1998, Deborah Stevenson, "True Blue."

Horn Book, January, 1989, Ethel R. Twichell, review of The Most Beautiful Place in the World, p. 66; January-February, 1996, Maeve Visser Knoth, review of The Stories Huey Tells, p. 97; July-August, 1997, Susan P. Bloom, review of More Stories Huey Tells, p. 452; March, 2000, review of Gloria's Way, p. 193; September-October, 2003, Lauren Adams, review of Colibri, pp. 607-608.

Junior Bookshelf, April, 1990, pp. 80-81; June, 1990, review of Julian, Secret Agent, p. 133; October, 1992, review of Julian, Dream Doctor, p. 196.

Junior Literary Guild, March, 1981.

Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2000, review of Gloria's Way; January 1, 2002, review of Gloria Rising, p. 43; July 1, 2003, review of Colibri, p. 907.

Kliatt, July, 2003, Claire Rosser, review of Colibri, p. 8.

New Yorker, December 12, 1988, review of The Most Beautiful Place in the World, p. 157.

New York Times Book Review, August 9, 1981, Natalie Babbit, review of The Stories Julian Tells, p. 24.

Publishers Weekly, March 23, 1998, review of The Secret Life of Amanda K. Woods, p. 101; March 20, 2000, review of Gloria's Way, p. 92; July 21, 2003, review of Colibri, p. 196.

School Library Journal, April, 1986, David Gale, review of More Stories Julian Tells, p. 84; June, 1989, Ann Cameron, "Write What You Care About," pp. 50-51; January, 1996, Maggie McEwen, review of The Stories Huey Tells, p. 76; June, 1997, Jackie Hechtkopf, review of More Stories Huey Tells, p. 85; May, 1998, Cyrisse Jaffee, review of The Secret Life of Amanda K. Woods, p. 138; March, 2000, Anne Parker, review of Gloria's Way, p. 189; March, 2002, Alicia Eames, review of Gloria Rising, pp. 172-173; October, 2003, Marie Orlando, review of Colibri, p. 162.