Hort, Lenny

Personal

Married; children: three daughters.

Addresses

Home—Fort Lee, NJ.

Career

Author and educator. Former children's book editor.

Writings

(Reteller) The Boy Who Held Back the Sea, illustrated by Thomas Locker, Dial Books (New York, NY), 1987.

(Reteller) Wilhelm Hauff, The Tale of Caliph Stork, illustrated by Friso Hensta, Dial Books (New York, NY), 1989.

(Reteller) Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev, The Fool and the Fish: A Tale from Russia, illustrated by Gennady Spirin, Dial Books (New York, NY), 1990.

How Many Stars in the Sky?, illustrated by James E. Ransome, Tambourine Books (New York, NY), 1991.

(Reteller) The Goatherd and the Shepherdess: A Tale from Ancient Greece, illustrated by Lloyd Bloom, Dial Books (New York, NY), 1995.

The Seals on the Bus, illustrated by G. Brian Karas, Holt (New York, NY), 2000.

Tie Your Socks and Clap Your Feet: Mixed Up Poems, illustrated by Stephen Kroninger, Atheneum (New York, NY), 2000.

Treasure Hunts! Treasure Hunts!, illustrated by Cary Pillo, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2000.

We're Going on Safari, illustrated by Tony Arma, Harry N. Abrams (New York, NY), 2002.

We're Going on a Treasure Hunt, illustrated by Tony Arma, Harry N. Abrams (New York, NY), 2003.

(Adaptor) Beatrice Masini, The Wedding Dress Mess, illustrated by Anna Laura Cantone, Watson-Guptill (New York, NY), 2003.

George Washington: A Photographic Story of a Life, Dorling Kindersley (New York, NY), 2005.

(With Laaren Brown) Nelson Mandela: A Photographic Story of a Life, Dorling Kindersley (New York, NY), 2006.

Did Dinosaurs Eat Pizza?: Mysteries Science Hasn't Solved, illustrated by John O'Brien, Holt (New York, NY), 2006.

Sidelights

Lenny Hort is a children's book author whose varied output has allowed him to work as a biographer, historian, and reteller of folktales and legends. In The Boy Who Held Back the Sea, an adaptation of a tale that appears in Hans Brinker; or, The Silver Skates by nineteenth-century children's book author Mary Mapes Dodge, Hort recounts the story of a young trouble-maker who saves his Dutch village from disaster by using his finger to plug a hole in a leaky dike. The author creates new characters and lengthens the original 1865 tale by "removing the story "from the realm of fable and placing it into fiction," noted School Library Journal critic Karen K. Radtke. In The Tale of Caliph Stork, Hort moves from the Netherlands to Persia, retelling a fairy tale in which a ruler of Baghdad finds himself unable to revert to human form after an evil sorcerer transforms him into a stork. "Hort's retelling is accessible and full of sly humor," observed Ruth Smith in a review of The Tale of Caliph Stork for School Library Journal.

The Fool and the Fish: A Tale from Russia, an adaptation of a folktale by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev, concerns the misadventures of a lazy young man named Ivan who discovers a magical fish that grants his every wish. According to School Library Journal contributor Denise Anton Wright, the work "captures the flavor of Tsarist Russia and the contrast between the social classes." In The Goatherd and the Shepherdess: A Tale from Ancient Greece Hort "transforms and condenses a sexy pastoral romance from third-century Greece into a tragic but ultimately uplifting story" about Chloe, her lover Daphnis, and his rival Dorcon, noted a reviewer in Publishers Weekly.

In Tie Your Socks and Clap Your Feet: Mixed Up Poems Hort collects eighteen absurd rhymes that describe such oddities as a groundhog delivering valentines, a purple-skinned orange, and a basement that serves as a garage. According to Stephanie Zvirin, writing in Booklist, "the words have the ring of children's own nonsense poetry." Based on the popular preschool song "The Wheels on the Bus," Hort's The Seals on the Bus follows a family of four on their wild bus ride, during which the driver picks up a variety of unusual passen-

gers, including seals, geese, monkeys, vipers, and skunks. In the words of a Horn Book reviewer, "the interaction between animal and human passengers … is pure jubilation."

Other adaptations by Holt include Beatrice Masini's The Wedding Dress Mess, a humorous tale about an Italian seamstress and her neglected fiancée. Filomena is known far and wide as an expert designer of wedding gowns, and after Filippo proposes marriage to her, she immediately begins constructing her own dress, an ambitious creation that takes all of her time. When Filomena finally dons the outfit for her wedding day, the overdone monstrosity so frightens Filippo that he flees the altar. "Hort's translation … has considerable tongue-in-cheek zip," noted a Kirkus Reviews critic, while School Library Journal contributor Be Astengo praised "the story's droll turn of phrase and jaunty pace." According to a Publishers Weekly reviewer, "Filomena's story offers a charmingly offbeat setting for the lesson that love beats all."

Holt moves from folktales to nonfiction in books such as George Washington: A Photographic Story of a Life and Did Dinosaurs Eat Pizza?: Mysteries Science Hasn't Solved. In Did Dinosaurs Eat Pizza?, a work aimed at early readers, Hort examines a series of unanswered questions about the prehistoric creatures. Calling the book "refreshing," Booklist reviewer Carolyn Phelan added that Hort "steers clear of both tooth-and-blood illustrations and the pretense that science has all the answers." A critic for Publishers Weekly described the text as "an entertaining way to consider how science is a field of raising questions and pursuing the answers, even if they are inconclusive."

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Booklist, February 1, 1995, Carolyn Phelan, review of The Goatherd and the Shepherdess: A Tale from Ancient Greece, p. 1010; March 15, 2000, Stephanie Zvirin, review of Tie Your Socks and Clap Your Feet: Mixed Up Poems, p. 1383; June 1, 2000, Carolyn Phelan, review of Treasure Hunts! Treasure Hunts!, p. 1884; April 1, 2000, Carolyn Phelan, review of The Seals on the Bus, p. 1463; November 1, 2002, Karin Snelson, review of We're Going on Safari, p. 508; April 1, 2006, Carolyn Phelan, review of Did Dinosaurs Eat Pizza?: Mysteries Science Hasn't Solved, p. 45.

Horn Book, May, 2000, review of The Seals on the Bus, p. 294.

Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2003, review of The Wedding Dress Mess, p. 473; February 1, 2006, review of Did Dinosaurs Eat Pizza?, p. 132.

Kliatt, May, 2005, Patricia Moore, review of George Washington: A Photographic Story of a Life, p. 41; November, 2006, Mary Ellen Snodgrass, review of Nelson Mandela: A Photographic Story of a Life, p. 34.

New York Times Book Review, November 11, 1990, D.M. Thomas, review of The Fool and the Fish: A Tale from Russia, p. 50.

Publishers Weekly, August 14, 1987, Diane Roback, review of The Boy Who Held Back the Sea, p. 100; August 31, 1990, review of The Fool and the Fish, p. 65; April 5, 1991, review of How Many Stars in the Sky?, p. 145; January 9, 1995, review of The Goatherd and the Shepherdess, p. 63; April 17, 2000, review of Tie Your Socks and Clap Your Feet, p. 79; October 14, 2002, review of We're Going on Safari, p. 82; March 10, 2003, review of The Wedding Dress Mess, p. 71; February 27, 2006, review of Did Dinosaurs Eat Pizza?, p. 60.

School Library Journal, November, 1987, Karen K. Radtke, review of The Boy Who Held Back the Sea, p. 91; November, 1990, Denise Anton Wright, review of The Fool and the Fish, p. 101; April, 2000, Barbara Chatton, review of Tie Your Socks and Clap Your Feet, p. 120; November, 2000, Rita Hunt Smith, review of Treasure Hunts! Treasure Hunts!, p. 143; May, 2000, John Sigwald, review of The Seals on the Bus, p. 161; November, 2002, Laurie von Mehren, review of We're Going on a Safari, p. 126; May, 2003, Be Astengo, review of The Wedding Dress Mess, p. 125; January, 2004, Martha Topol, review of We're Going on a Treasure Hunt, p. 98; March, 2006, Mary Elam, review of Did Dinosaurs Eat Pizza?, p. 209.