Atkins, Jeannine 1953–

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Atkins, Jeannine 1953–

Personal

Born July 14, 1953, in Montclair, NJ; daughter of David (an engineer and guidance counselor) and Marjorie (a homemaker; maiden name, Wolff) Atkins; married; children: one daughter. Education: University of Massachusetts at Amherst, B.A.; University of New Hampshire, M.A.

Addresses

Home—Whately, MA. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 19 Union Square W., New York, NY 10003. E-mail—[email protected].

Career

Writer. Worked as a high-school English teacher, 1994–98; instructor, University of Massachusetts—Amherst, 2006.

Awards, Honors

Notable Book for Children citation, Smithsonian, for Aani and the Tree Huggers; Pick of the lists selection, American Bookseller, 1999, for A Name on the Quilt; Amelia Bloomer Project selection, American Library Association, 2003, for Wings and Rockets.

Writings

Aani and the Tree Huggers, illustrated by Venantius J. Pinto, Lee & Low (New York, NY), 1996.

Get Set! Swim!, illustrated by Hector Viveros Lee, Lee & Low (New York, NY), 1998.

A Name on the Quilt: A Story of Remembrance, illustrated by Tad Hills, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1999.

Mary Anning and the Sea Dragon, illustrated by Michael Dooling, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1999.

Girls Who Looked under Rocks: The Lives of Six Pioneering Naturalists, illustrated by Paula Conner, Dawn Publications (Nevada City, CA), 2000.

Becoming Little Women: A Novel about Louisa May at Fruitlands, Putnam's (New York, NY), 2001.

Robin's Home, illustrated by Candace Whitman, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 2001.

Wings and Rockets: The Story of Women in Air and Space, illustrated by Dušan PetričIć, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 2003.

How High Can We Climb?: The Story of Women Explorers, illustrated by Dusan Petrīcíc, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 2005.

Ann Hutchinson's Way, illustrated by Michael Dooling, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor of stories to magazines, including North American Review, Boston Review, and San Francisco Review of Books.

Sidelights

Former high-school teacher and current college instructor Jeannine Atkins is the author of picture books and books featuring women from history. When she visits schools, young male students often ask her why she only writes about girls. "I don't go into the loneliness I felt as a teenager reading books with few women's names, or my anger in the 1970s when it seemed I could earn a college degree in English without having read the writing of any woman except Emily Dickinson," Atkins wrote in the Children's Book Council Magazine. "I don't point out that there are plenty of men who write mostly about men, and not enough people who question why they choose to do so. I might simply say that I was a girl and I have a daughter." Atkins's passion for women's history shows up in many of her books, from Mary Anning and the Sea Dragon, a picture book about paleontologist Mary Anning, to How High Can We Climb?: The Story of Women Explorers, a collection that features twelve profiles of women who have journeyed all over the world.

In her early titles, Atkins used the picture-book format to explore themes of family. Get Set! Swim! is the story of young Jessenia's swim meet set against her mother's recollections of Puerto Rico. A Name on the Quilt: A Story of Remembrance features a family putting together a quilt to remember Uncle Ron, who had AIDS. Booklist reviewer GraceAnne A. DeCandido called the 1999 title "a gentle book." Robin's Home features a bird family trying to convince their youngest chick that he is ready to leave the nest and fly. With help from his parents, young Robin conquers his fears and takes wing. "Atkins's story may well reassure youngsters that they, too, will be able to strike it out on their own one day," wrote a contributor to Publishers Weekly. Carolyn Jenks, writing in School Library Journal, noted that Atkins's "writing is clear and accessible" and that the text "may connect meaningfully with youngsters who struggle to move from the comfortable to the unfamiliar."

With Mary Anning and the Sea Dragon, Atkins's interest in women's history comes to the fore in a retelling of Mary Anning's discovery of a complete ichthyosaur fossil, the first complete fossil of this type to be found, when she was only twelve years old. A critic for Publishers Weekly called the picture book "a sensitive if romanticized portrait of the real-life discoverer." Discussing the work, Booklist contributor Shelley Townsend-Hudson felt that Atkins's use of detail helps "reveal essential elements of Anning's personality."

Becoming Little Women: Lousia May at Fruitlands is a novel about the early life of Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women among other titles. The book is set during the time when Alcott's father moved the family to a farm to live at one with nature while also giving up on meat and other animal byproducts that might take advantage of the animal. Alcott is eleven years old and irritated with what her father's decisions are doing to their family. Like her character Jo March, she has a rebellious spirit and does what she must to help her mother and sisters get by. "Atkins offers a trusty dose of reality for future readers of Little Women," wrote a Horn Book reviewer. According to Patti Gonzales in School Library Journal, "the plot moves along well and one gets a real sense of the frustration at having to live such an austere life and of the extreme devotion to a man obsessed with a dream."

Wings and Rockets: The Story of Women in Air and Space and How High Can We Climb? delve into women's history from a nonfiction angle. Wings and Rockets describes women who are involved in flight, aviation, and space exploration, and began in Atkins's mind when she was visiting a small military museum. "I'm always intrigued by women I never read about in history books while growing up," she explained on her home page. "I bought a few books [about women military pilots] and soon was captivated by the daring WASPs who ferried and tested airplanes during the war … then were sent home with a rather swift farewell." From these female military pilots, to the sister of Orville and Wilbur Wright, to astronaut Sally Ride, Wings and Rockets gives a full image of how women have affected the aeronautics industry. "The author uses created dialogue to humanize these women, foreshortening the account and making each chapter almost anecdotal in style," described a Kirkus Reviews contributor. Linda Wadleigh in School Library Journal, commented: "The writing is crisp and captivating."

In How High Can We Climb? Atkins highlights the journeys of famous women explorers. A Kirkus Reviews contributor referred to the women profiled as "mostly unknown," something that Atkins's title seeks to remedy. Jeanne Baret, the first woman to sail around the world; Junko Tabei, the first woman to climb Mount Everest; and Elisabeth Casteret, who explored caves in the Pyrenees, are among those featured. During her research, Atkins "realized that all the adventures I learned about couldn't fit in one book," as she explained on her home page. Instead, she has aimed for geographic diversity, and features the names of other explorers on a time line at the back of the book. "Atkins creates a realistic

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narrative complete with conversational exchanges," noted a School Library Journal contributor.

Atkins once told SATA: "I was one of those kids who always liked to write. I wrote little books made from folded paper during recess and on weekends wrote letters, a family newspaper, the first acts of plays—often things never got finished or mailed, but holding a pen and dreaming was fun. It seemed natural to major in English in college, then to teach it in high school. During graduate school and the summers when I taught, I wrote stories for adults that were published in small magazines (mostly heard of only by other graduate students).

"After my daughter was born, I loved little better than snuggling with her and reading, and I became better acquainted with children's books. I remembered my old love of heroines, and I was pretty happy to give up my stories of disaffected adults to try my hand at happy endings. My working habits are pretty much the same as they've always been—thinking while walking the dogs or lounging with my face jammed against a pillow, writing thoughts (barely decipherable) in no particular order, then arranging them later at the computer. I've been in a writing group with three others for ten years, and I am helped by their kindness, humor, and severe standards.

"Advice for other writers is hackneyed, I'm afraid—but no one can say enough about persistence. I'd been writing seriously for twenty years before my first book was published. You have to love writing and enjoy the encouragement of fellow-sister writers. In the privacy of your home, get angry at editors who are busy and remote, but keep on believing in yourself. Keep on writing."

Atkins added: "I wasn't the first to sit down at school spelling bees, but I never brought home a trophy, either. I spent many gym classes far out in the field, daydreaming and praying that the ball wouldn't come too close. My fingers scrambled when I tried to play the piano. I messed up the positions in ballet. My Halloween costumes were unspectacular. But I had a knack for memorizing poems.

"In second grade, Mrs. Dunwoody pushed me out the door with a poem that I was to memorize on my way to another classroom. I shuffled down the hall, head bent, murmuring, then recited three stanzas to a delighted teacher but un-amazed third grade.

"It seemed cool that words could rhyme. The rhythm in poetry lured me, but I liked stories, too. Because I loved to read, I wanted to write. I read and wrote both at home and at school. Among the trees behind our house, I played that I was Sacajawea, Louisa May Alcott, or Archie's pal Betty.

"Much of my writing featured the fairies, trolls, and heroic prairie girls I liked to read about, but in fifth grade, my teacher asked us to write about something that re-ally happened to us. I was stumped. My own life in the middle of Massachusetts seemed so ordinary. I didn't guide Lewis and Clark over mountains or put my Christmas dinner in a basket to carry to a poor family, or go on dates at soda shops. After staring at the kitchen table for a while (like the sky, kitchen tables are packed with ideas), I remembered a recent day when we heard thumping in the clothes dryer. When my mom opened the door, our cat Fluffo calmly stepped out with his superior cat look that said 'I meant to do that.' Fluffo must have curled inside the cozy spot, then been surprised when the door snapped shut and he began to spin.

"I was asked to read [part of the story] aloud…. I can still remember the laughter and the sense of power I felt from making people see what I'd seen. Well. I couldn't create the splendid noise of a ball smacking a bat. I never mastered an arabesque, and I couldn't think of clever things to say until people had left the room. But now I had this, I had writing. Learning the tricks and pleasures of language made my life less lonely.

"I grew up into someone who reads books, writes books, and teaches books. After finishing college, I got married, had a child, and in the natural course of events began to read and reread Goodnight Moon and other books with bunnies, badgers, and armadillos as protagonists. Like thousands of others before me, I thought, 'I could write this stuff.' I'd written fiction for adults, though, and I knew that clear, easy sentences can trick readers into thinking that they must have been easy to write.

"At least I could research while hauling my daughter around the library or snuggling next to her under blankets. I snuck peeks at the publisher's name on the spine while my daughter told me to get on with the story. In spare moments I thought about what topics had been done and what hadn't, and what I most wanted to say. I scanned The Cat in the Hat. I studied old favorites like Angus Lost, amazed by its page-turning hooks: that snowstorm! that mailman! Picture books, like poems, are meant to be read aloud, so I murmured words until the rhythm felt right. Every word must be chosen with care or ruthlessly cut. I stared down sentences and obsessed over commas.

"I sent drafts to Bruce, Dina, and Lisa, the members of my writing group. Every few weeks we met in coffee shops where we argued, encouraged, gossiped a bit, questioned, and learned to trust each other. Sometimes I muttered as I drove home; once in a while, I felt elated. Always, the next morning, I scratched out sentences or paragraphs or chapters and began to write again.

"I made lots of trips to copy shops. I mailed envelopes with my work and another envelope addressed to myself so that editors who didn't want my writing could return it. I got back enough of these envelopes for one mail carrier to ask if I was sending letters to myself. Finally

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I got a wonderful phone call. My writing friends and my family gathered for a party. Reader, I got published."

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 15, 1998, Ilene Cooper, review of Get Set! Swim!, p. 1629; January 1, 1999, GraceAnne A. De-Candido, review of A Name on the Quilt: A Story of Remembrance, p. 885; September 1, 1999, Shelley Townsend-Hudson, review of Mary Anning and the Sea Dragon, p. 135; March 15, 2001, Connie Fletcher, review of Robin's Home, p. 1402; November 15, 2001, Marta Segal, review of Becoming Little Women: A Novel about Louisa May at Fruitlands, p. 566.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, October, 2001, review of Becoming Little Women, p. 49.

Children's Book Review Service, June, 1998, p. 127.

Horn Book, September, 2001, review of Becoming Little Women, p. 580.

Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 1998, p. 492; January 1, 2003, review of Wings and Rockets: The Story of Women in Air and Space, p. 56; July 15, 2005, review of How High Can We Climb?, p. 785.

New York Times Book Review, November 21, 1999.

Publishers Weekly, January 11, 1999, review of A Name on the Quilt, p. 72; August 16, 1999, review of Mary Anning and the Sea Dragon, p. 85; February 26, 2001, review of Robin's Home, p. 84.

School Library Journal, December, 1995, p. 94; May, 1998, p. 106; March, 1999, Judith Gloyer, review of A Name on the Quilt, p. 162; October, 1999, review of Mary Anning and the Sea Dragon, p. 132; April, 2001, Carolyn Jenks, review of Robin's Home, p. 98; October, 2001, Patti Gonzales, review of Becoming Little Women, p. 148; March, 2003, Linda Wadleigh, review of Wings and Rockets, p. 244.

Smithsonian, November, 1995, p. 169.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), July 20, 2003, review of Wings and Rockets, p. 4.