Doyle, Charlotte (Lackner) 1937-

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DOYLE, Charlotte (Lackner) 1937-

PERSONAL: Born June 25, 1937, in Vienna, Austria; immigrated to the United States, 1939; naturalized U.S. citizen; daughter of George (a restaurant worker) and Mary (a poet and homemaker) Lackner; married Jim Doyle (a playwright), 1959. Education: Temple University, B.A., 1959; University of Michigan, M.A., 1961, Ph.D., 1965. Hobbies and other interests: Camping in national and state parks, traveling to new places, reading, watching public television, playing with the computer.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of Psychology, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY 10708-5999. Agent—Liza Pulitzer Voges, Kirchoff/Wohlberg, 866 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017. E-mail[email protected].

CAREER: Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY, professor of psychology and children's literature.

MEMBER: American Psychological Association (member of executive committee, Division on Psychology and the Arts), Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, American Association for the Advancement of Science.

WRITINGS:

children's books

Hello Baby, illustrated by Kees de Kiefte, Random House (New York, NY), 1989.

Freddie's Spaghetti, illustrated by Nicholas Reilly, Random House (New York, NY), 1991.

Where's Bunny's Mommy?, illustrated by Rick Brown, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1995.

You Can't Catch Me, illustrated by Roseanne Litziger, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1997.

Twins!, illustrated by Julia Gorton, Putnam (New York, NY), 2003.

Supermarket, illustrated by Nadine Bernard Westcott, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), in press.

textbooks

(With W. J. McKeachie) Psychology, Addison-Wesley (Reading, MA), 1966.

(With W. J. McKeachie) Psychology: The Short Course, Addison-Wesley (Reading, MA), 1972.

Explorations in Psychology, Brooks/Cole (Monterey, CA), 1987.

Contributor to periodicals, including Creativity Research Journal.

SIDELIGHTS: Charlotte Doyle once told CA: "I never expected to be writing children's books. I was a college professor, an author of psychology texts and articles, and a researcher into the creative process. Then, one day, I sat down to write a letter to a child, and the letter turned into a children's story. I read it to the children at Sarah Lawrence's Early Childhood Center. The children were so responsive and it was so much fun that I began to hang out there.

"Again and again, being with children has inspired me. I watched some children be loving about having new baby brothers and sisters and others be resentful, and that gave me Hello Baby. A child, so happy to be eating spaghetti that it seemed life couldn't get any better, gave me Freddie's Spaghetti. Watching very young children happy to be in school, but stopping every once in a while to look around, puzzled, and asking 'Where's Mommy?' inspired Where's Bunny's Mommy? Seeing the pleasures of chasing and being chased on the playground led to You Can't Catch Me.

"When I write, I try to enter the world of young children, to see the world as a child does. My greatest pleasure is when children recognize the world created by my books as their world, as giving voice to their fears and hopes and joys, and so say to me, 'Read it again.'"

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Booklist, April 1, 1995, p. 1424; February 15, 2003, Kathy Broderick, review of Twins!, p. 1073.

New York Times, November 4, 1990.

School Library Journal, June, 1990, p. 98; July, 1995, p. 61; March, 2003, Joy Fleishhacker, review of Twins!, p. 191.

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