GREGORY, Valiska 1940-

PERSONAL: Born November 3, 1940, in Chicago, IL; daughter of Andrej (a sign painter) and Stephania (a clerk; maiden name, Lascik) Valiska; married Marshall W. Gregory (a university professor), August 18, 1962; children: Melissa, Holly. Education: Indiana Central College, B.A. (cum laude), 1962; University of Chicago, M.A., 1966; postgraduate study at Vassar Institute of Publishing and Writing, 1984, and Simmons College Center for the Study of Children's Literature, 1986. Politics: Democrat.

ADDRESSES: Home—5300 Grandview Dr., Indianapolis, IN 46228. Office—Children's Literature Conference, Butler University, 4600 Sunset Ave., Indianapolis, IN 46228. Agent—Tracey Adams, McIntosh & Otis, Inc., 353 Lexington Ave., New York, NY 10016. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: White Oak Elementary School, Whiting, IN, music and drama teacher, 1962-64; Oak Lawn Memorial High School, Oak Lawn, IL, teacher, 1965-68; University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, lecturer in English, 1968-74; University of Indianapolis, Indianapolis, IN, adjunct professor of English, 1974-83; Butler University, Indianapolis, adjunct professor of English, 1983-85, fellow at Butler Writers' Studio and founding director of Butler University Midwinter Children's Literature Conference, 1989—, writer-inresidence, 1993—. Speaker/workshop leader at schools, libraries, and conferences across the United States, 1983—.

MEMBER: Authors Guild, Authors League of America, American Association of University Women (creative writers president, 1984-86), Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, National Book Critics Circle, Children's Reading Round Table, Society of Midland Authors.

AWARDS, HONORS: Illinois Wesleyan University Poetry Award, 1982; Billee Murray Denny National Poetry Award honorable mention, 1982; Hudelson Award for Children's Fiction Work-in-Progress, 1982; individual artist master fellowship, Indiana Arts Commission/National Endowment for the Arts, 1986, for artistic excellence and achievements; Chicago Sun-TimesBest of the Best selections, 1987, for The Oatmeal Cookie Giant and Riddle Soup; named State Art Treasure, Arts Indiana, 1989, for achievement in poetry and children's fiction; Parents' Choice Award, 1992, for Through the Mickle Woods; American Booksellers Association Pick of the List, 1992, for Through the Mickle Woods, and 1995, for Looking for Angels; Parents' Choice Honor Award, 1993, for Babysitting for Benjamin; Cooperative Children's Book Center best book designation, and New York Public Library notable book designation, both for When Stories Fell like Shooting Stars; Best Book Gold Award, Oppenheim Institute, for Shirley's Wonderful Baby.

WRITINGS:

FOR CHILDREN

Terribly Wonderful, illustrated by Jeni Bassett, Macmillan/Four Winds (New York, NY), 1986.

Sunny Side Up, illustrated by Jeni Bassett, Macmillan/Four Winds (New York, NY), 1986.

Riddle Soup, illustrated by Jeni Bassett, Macmillan/Four Winds (New York, NY), 1987.

The Oatmeal Cookie Giant, illustrated by Jeni Bassett, Macmillan/Four Winds (New York, NY), 1987.

Happy Burpday, Maggie McDougal!, illustrated by Pat Porter, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1992.

Through the Mickle Woods, illustrated by Barry Moser, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1992.

Babysitting for Benjamin, illustrated by Lynn Munsinger, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1993.

Stories from a Time Before, illustrated by Margot Tomes, Open Court (LaSalle, IL), 1995.

Kate's Giants, illustrated by Virginia Austin, Candlewick Press/Walker Books (New York, NY), 1995.

Looking for Angels, illustrated by Leslie Baker, Simon and Schuster (New York, NY), 1996.

When Stories Fell like Shooting Stars, illustrated by Stephano Vitale, Simon and Schuster (New York, NY), 1996.

A Valentine for Norman Noggs, illustrated by Marsha Winborn, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1999.

Shirley's Wonderful Baby, illustrated by Bruce Degen, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2002.

The Mystery of the Grindlecat, illustrated by Claire Ewart, Guild Press/Emmis Publishing (Cincinnati, OH), 2003.

Contributor to On Her Way, edited by Sandy Asher, Dutton (New York, NY), 2004. Contributor of stories and poems for children to Cricket.

OTHER

The Words like Angels Come (poetry for adults), Juniper Press (Bangor, ME), 1987.

Contributor of poetry and articles to periodicals, including Publishers Weekly, Poetry Northeast, Spoon River, and Poet. Contributor of children's book reviews to Publishers Weekly.

Author's poetry and adult book manuscripts are housed in the Juniper Press Collection, Rare Book Room, University of Wisconsin Library.

Author's books have been translated into seven languages.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Heroes, illustrated by Mike Wimmer, for Dutton.

SIDELIGHTS: Beginning her writing career in the mid-1980s, Valiska Gregory has become widely recognized in the children's literature field. Her books Through the Mickle Woods and Babysitting for Benjamin won Parents' Choice Awards in 1992 and 1993 respectively.

Gregory gained her insights into the world of children's literature from a combination of practical and scholarly experience. She learned to love stories from an early age. "I was lucky enough to grow up in a Czech neighborhood in Chicago where money was scarce but children were treasured, and where, always, my father told us stories," the author once commented. "I received my M.A. degree from the University of Chicago on a Ford Foundation fellowship," she also explained, "and I have taught every grade there is—from kindergarten children to seniors in college, with courses ranging from poetry and drama to music and American literature."

"I don't really choose the stories I write; they have a way of choosing me," Gregory noted. "I have long been fascinated by the creative process: how the experience we call life is woven into the pattern we call fiction. I try to save everything, the way some people save bits of string or pieces of cloth. This saving is important, because one never knows when a particular slant of light or glance of vermillion might be something from which a story grows."

It was an eighteen-pound pet rabbit belonging to her daughters that inspired Gregory's 1993 picture book, Babysitting for Benjamin. The book introduces young readers to Ralph and Frances, an old married mouse couple who decide to babysit a rabbit to put some zip back into their lives. They get more than they bargained for when Benjamin wreaks havoc upon their home. By the end of the story, however, Ralph and Frances have found a happy solution to keeping their wits without having to lose Benjamin's frolicsome company. "This wholesome message," praised a Kirkus Reviews critic, "is appealingly packaged with amusingly wry dialogue and disarming illustrations."

Another of Gregory's popular creations is Happy Burpday, Maggie McDougal!, in which Maggie faces the problem of getting her friend Bonkers a nice birthday present when she has no money. Cynthia, her snooty classmate, has spent tons of cash on a present, and Maggie is stumped at what to do until she finds some treasures in her grandmother's attic that Bonkers ends up liking more than Cynthia's gift. While School Library Journal contributor Maggie McEwen was uncomfortable with the coincidence that Maggie happens to find valuable issues of Bonkers' favorite comic book in the attic, she praised the "vivid images and neat turns of phrase"—especially the "delightfully funny" scenes portraying teacher Ms. Chumley's efforts to instruct Maggie's class—and concludes that the book is a "satisfying" work for "beginning chapter book readers."

Through the Mickle Woods is a much more serious work for Gregory; it has its genesis in a difficult time in the author's life and, as she once explained, "wove together all I had learned about despair and the healing power of love." The story tells of a king and his grief over his dying queen. Her last request to him is that he go into the "dark and mickle woods" and find a mysterious bear. When the king finds the bear, the animal turns out to be a wise creature whose stories about beauty and life eventually console the king. "The language and phrasing are as pleasing to the ear as the story is to the heart," declared Horn Book critic Elizabeth S. Watson.

Kate's Giants tells of a little girl who imagines terrible monsters in the darkness of her bedroom at night. Told by her parents that since she can think these monsters into existence, she can also think them away, Kate takes this a step further when she imagines friendly creatures into existence by story's end. "Inspiring self-reliance, this inventive story is just the ticket for children afflicted by a bogeyman," commented a critic in Publishers Weekly. "Even the youngest will appreciate Kate's imagined bears and giants," Linda Ward-Callaghan added of Gregory's work in Booklist.

In A Valentine for Norman Noggs Gregory recounts the story of young Norman, a hamster who loves Wilhelmina. But Norman is bullied by two larger boy hamsters who threaten to tear up the homemade valentine he plans to give his beloved. Ilene Cooper, in a Booklist review, maintained that "school children will recognize the ups and downs of young love and will like the nice twist at the end." Jackie Hechtkopf, in School Library Journal, called the book a "a warmhearted confection."

A new baby in a hippo family is the subject of Shirley's Wonderful Baby, in which everybody loves Shirley's new brother Stanley . . . except for Shirley. Only when babysitter Ms. Mump pretends not to like children does Shirley come to appreciate her new sibling. A critic for Publishers Weekly praised Gregory for getting "the arch tone just right, and it grows warmer as Shirley's affection deepens." A Kirkus Reviews critic found that having "Ms. Mump serving as a foil to bring Shirley and Stanley close is a nice twist." Kristin de Lacoste, writing in School Library Journal, concluded: "Children with siblings will relate to this young hippo."

On her Web site, Gregory offered suggestions to writers regarding ideas for stories: "Make sure you do not miss a single thing. Find as many interesting things to put inside your head as you can, and you'll have plenty of interesting things to write about.... Save all the things you see and read and do and think about. Then ask yourself, what if . . . ?" Regarding her chosen career, she also commented: "If it is true that all of us write the stories of our own lives each day, as we live them, then books for children are important, because it is through books that children learn about the power of language, about joy and sorrow and laughter and action, about how they might weave together the disparate experiences and possibilities that will become the stories of their own lives." More recently Gregory told CA: "Before I begin writing a story, I'm like a magpie, always collecting things. Generally, a phrase or image rattles around in my head until a story forms around it. I like to think of it as a grain of sand in an oyster, but it often feels more like a barnacle stuck to the bottom of a ship. For example, the phrase that began Shirley's Wonderful Baby came from the 'real' Shirley Mullin, owner of Kids Ink Children's Bookstores, who told me about her new grandson, Max. Each time I saw Shirley, I would ask, 'So how's Max?' Shirley would invariably light up like a Madonna with a halo on a Christmas card and answer 'He's wonderful!' Each time I asked about Max, Shirley would say the same thing, and her 'He's wonderful!' rattled around in my head for months. One day, the book Shirley tap danced on to my computer screen, and the story seemed to write itself."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 1, 1992, review of Through the Mickle Woods, p. 675; April 15, 1993, Hazel Rochman, review of Babysitting for Benjamin, p. 1523; October 15, 1995, Linda Ward-Callaghan, review of Kate's Giants, p. 411; June 1, 1996, Ilene Cooper, review of Looking for Angels, p. 1734; April 1, 1999, Ilene Cooper, review of A Valentine for Norman Noggs, p. 1420.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, September, 1992, p. 11.

Horn Book, March-April, 1993, Elizabeth S. Watson, review of Through the Mickle Woods, pp. 202-203; September-October, 1993, Hanna B. Zeiger, review of Babysitting for Benjamin, pp. 585-586.

Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 1992, pp. 669-670; May 15, 1993, p. 660; August 15, 2002, review of Shirley's Wonderful Baby, p. 1224.

Publishers Weekly, July 25, 1986, pp. 183-184; May 17, 1993, review of Babysitting for Benjamin, p. 78; September 11, 1995, review of Kate's Giants, p. 84; April 22, 1996, review of Looking for Angels, p. 71; October 21, 1996, review of When Stories Fell like Shooting Stars, p. 82; December 14, 1998, review of A Valentine for Norman Noggs, p. 75; July 8, 2002, review of Shirley's Wonderful Baby, p. 48.

School Library Journal, March, 1987; February, 1988; June, 1992, Maggie McEwen, review of Happy Burpday, Maggie McDougal!, p. 93; June, 1993, Rachel Fox, review of Babysitting for Benjamin, p. 76; December, 1995, Tana Elias, review of Kate's Giants, p. 81; March, 1996, Kate McClelland, review of Looking for Angels, p. 174; October, 1996, Rita Soltan, review of When Stories Fell like Shooting Stars, p. 94; January, 1999, Jackie Hechtkopf, review of A Valentine for Norman Noggs, p. 88; November, 2002, Kristin de Lacoste, review of Shirley's Wonderful Baby, p. 124.

ONLINE

Valiska Gregory Web site,http://www.valiskagregory.com (November 6, 2003).