Ross, Catherine Sheldrick 1945-

PERSONAL:

Born November 4, 1945, in London, Ontario, Canada; daughter of Russell R. (a lawyer) and Elsie I. (a high school teacher) Sheldrick; married George H. Ross (a high school teacher), December, 1967; children: Sarah E. Ross Wills, Jacob M.S. Education: University of Western Ontario, B.A. (with honors), 1967, Ph.D., 1976, M.L.I.S., 1984; University of Toronto, M.A., 1968. Religion: Anglican. Hobbies and other interests: Canoeing, hiking, reading.

ADDRESSES:

Home—London, Ontario, Canada. Office—Faculty of Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario N6A 5B7, Canada. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

High school teacher, 1968-69; University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, faculty member, 1973—, currently professor and dean of information and media studies. Also workshop presenter.

MEMBER:

Association of Library and Information Science Educators, Ontario Library Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Reference Service Press Awards, 1996, 2000, 2002; Science Writers of Canada Award, best science book written for children, 1996, for Squares: Shapes in Math, Science, and Nature.

WRITINGS:

(With Patricia Dewdney) Communicating Professionally, Neal-Schuman (New York, NY), 1989, 2nd edition, 1998.

(With Susan Wallace) The Amazing Milk Book, illustrated by Linda Hendry, Kids Can Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1991.

A Double Life: A Biography of Alice Munro, ECW Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1992.

Circles: Shapes in Math, Science, and Nature, Kids Can Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1992, published as Circles: Fun Ideas for Getting Around in Math, Addison-Wesley (Reading, MA), 1992.

Triangles: Shapes in Math, Science, and Nature, Kids Can Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1994.

Squares: Shapes in Math, Science, and Nature, Kids Can Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1996.

(With Patricia Dewdney and Kirsti Nilsen) Conducting the Reference Interview: A How-to-Do-It Manual for Librarians, Neal-Schuman (New York, NY), 2002.

(With Lynne McKechnie and Paulette Rothbauer) Reading Matters: What the Research Reveals about Reading, Libraries, and Community, Libraries Unlimited (Westport, CT), 2005.

Contributor to periodicals.

Ross's books have been translated into French, Danish, Italian, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.

SIDELIGHTS:

Catherine Sheldrick Ross told CA: "My interest in children'began initially because I was teaching children'ture in a school of library and information science and was reading children'along with my children. As part of a research project, I interviewed children's and have published these interviews with Margaret Atwood, Paulette Bourgeois, Dennis Lee, Jean Little, James Reaney, and others. Having talked to Bourgeois about her Franklin in the Dark book and her nonfiction Amazing Apple book, I became interested in the challenge of writing interesting science-related nonfiction books for children. My first book, written with Susan Wallace, was on milk, which truly is an amazing substance. Then I got interested in circles, an amazing geometrical shape that is important in nature, art, myth, and architecture. Before you know it, I had written a series of math books on circles, triangles, and squares—and found myself invited to math conferences.

"The other books, written for adults, have been connected with my other life as a faculty member and researcher. They include A Double Life: A Biography of Alice Munro and a coauthored book on pleasure reading titled Reading Matters: What the Research Reveals about Reading, Libraries, and Community. I am interested in reading from lots of angles. From a personal standpoint, I can'e life without reading for pleasure. As a parent and teacher, I have a strong conviction that the best thing (well, one of the best things) you can do for a child is to read aloud the books that the child enjoys and keep this up well past the time when the child can read on his or her own. As a researcher, I am studying reading for pleasure. As a teacher of students in a master'm that trains library and information science professionals, I do workshops and write articles on the process of readers' advisory—how to help people find the books that they will enjoy reading."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Library Journal, March 15, 2006, Brian Kenney, review of Reading Matters: What the Research Reveals about Reading, Libraries, and Community, p. 104.