Sawyer, Kem Knapp 1953–

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Sawyer, Kem Knapp 1953–

PERSONAL: Born June 11, 1953, in New York, NY; daughter of John E. and Evelyn Knapp; married Jon Sawyer (a journalist), 1974; children: Kate, Eve, Ida. Education: Yale University, B.A., 1974.

ADDRESSES: Home—Washington, DC.

CAREER: Writer and educator. Corcoran College of Art & Design, Washington, DC, writing teacher. Taught elementary and junior high students in St. Louis, MO.

WRITINGS:

The National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities, Chelsea House (Broomall, PA), 1989.

The U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Chelsea House (New York, NY), 1990.

Lucretia Mott: Friend of Justice, illustrated by Leslie Carow, Discovery Enterprises (Lowell, MA), 1991.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas: Guardian of the Everglades, illustrated by Carow, Discovery Enterprises (Lowell, MA), 1994.

Refugees: Seeking a Safe Haven, Enslow (Hillside, NJ), 1995.

The Underground Railroad in American History, Enslow Publishers (Hillside, NJ), 1997.

(Editor) Irish Americans, Discovery Enterprises (Lowell, MA), 1998.

(Editor) Pennsylvania Dutch: The Amish and the Mennonites, Discovery Enterprises (Lowell, MA), 1998.

Freedom Calls: Journey of a Slave Girl (novel), White Mane Kids (Shippensburg, PA), 2001.

Anne Frank, DK (New York, NY), 2004.

Eleanor Roosevelt, DK (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS: Kem Knapp Sawyer has written biographies and fiction for young people. Lucretia Mott: Friend of Justice tells of the antislavery and women's rights leader of the 1800s. Mott was also a Quaker minister who organized the first women's rights convention in the United States and authored the book Discourse on Women. Writing in the School Library Journal, April L. Judge commented that Sawyer "describes Mott's Quaker upbringing and attributes many of her convictions about the abolitionist and women's suffrage movements to that heritage."

For her novel Freedom Calls: Journey of a Slave Girl, Sawyer writes of Louisa, a fifteen-year-old slave who is trying to escape from her masters in the South. Louisa ends up hiding in the room of a young girl whose father is the publisher of an antislavery newspaper. She eventually travels to England, where she finds true freedom. Cyrise Jaffee, writing in the School Library Journal, noted that the book is "obviously well researched." Book Report contributor Patsy Launspach wrote: "If the reader could afford only one title on this subject, this is it."

In the biography Anne Frank, Sawyer writes about perhaps the most widely known victim of the Holocaust. For her account, Sawyer draws not only on Frank's famous diary but also on reports provided by Frank's father and the man who rescued the rest of Frank's family. "Her clear history makes this a good place to start research," wrote Hazel Rochman in Booklist.

Sawyer once told CA: "For as long as I can remember I wanted to be a writer. I was lying in bed one night at the age of nine; when my mother came in to say goodnight, I told her I wanted to be a writer. You would have thought I had just revealed the most private thought—the deepest, darkest secret. Of course she wasn't supposed to tell anyone and she wasn't supposed to bring it up or ever remind me what I had told her. I don't know why it had to be such a big secret, but it did. I didn't have many secrets then, but it seemed pretty daring to want to be a writer. I guess I didn't do that many daring things. My sister and I did on occasion crawl out onto the fire escape—forbidden territory on Waverly Place in New York City where I grew up. We took the cats with us and ate peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and opened a can of real tuna—not cat food—for the cats. But that was about it in the daring secret category.

"I like writing about people whose lives are not very well known. I tend to spend much time in libraries uncovering little-known facts. In working on my book on the underground railroad, I've discovered events that happened a hundred and fifty years ago and have long been forgotten. But they are stories worth telling. And some are stories that must be told."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, June 1, 2004, Hazel Rochman, review of Anne Frank, p. 1757.

Book Report, September-October, 2001, Patsy Launspach, review of Freedom Calls: Journey of a Slave Girl, p. 66.

School Library Journal, June, 1990, Miriam Hansen, review of The National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities, p. 143; October, 1991, April L. Judge, review of Lucretia Mott, p. 134; December, 1993, p. 130; July, 2001, Cyrisse Jaffee, review of Freedom Calls, p. 114.