Levine, Ellen 1939–

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Levine, Ellen 1939–

Personal

Born March 9, 1939, in New York, NY; daughter of Nathan (a lawyer) and Ide (an executive secretary for an advertising agency) Levine. Education: Brandeis University, B.A. (politics; magna cum laude), 1960; University of Chicago, M.A. (political science), 1962; New York University, J.D., 1979; additional study at University of California, Berkeley, and Columbia University.

Addresses

Home—New York, NY; Salem, NY.

Career

Writer, lawyer, sculptor, filmmaker, and freelance photographer. Former staff attorney for public-interest law group. Has prepared video and audio portions of documentary films for CBS News, 1964-73, for National Educational Television, Amram Nowak Associates, Avco Corp., and Telpac, Inc., as well as photographic work for Ford Foundation, Pepsi-Cola, Inc., Media Medica, and magazines and publishers. Producer and director, Consumers Union Broadcast, film division, 1973-75; associate producer of television special Golden Mountain on Mott Street. Associate editor and research director of Diplomat. Teacher for Chinatown Planning Project; adult literacy tutor and teacher of English as a second language; Vermont College MFA program in writing for children and young adults, member of staff.

Awards, Honors

National Book Award nomination, 1972; American Judicature Society Prize, 1978; Order of the Coif, New York University, 1979; Jane Addams Peace Award, 1994, for Freedom's Children; Carter G. Woodson Book Award: Secondary, 1996, for A Fence Away from Freedom.

Writings

FOR CHILDREN

If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1986.

If You Lived at the Time of the Great San Francisco Earthquake, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1987.

If You Traveled on the Underground Railroad, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1987.

If You Were an Animal Doctor, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1988.

Spies and Secret Missions: Four True Stories, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1988.

I Hate English!, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1989.

Ready, Aim, Fire!, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1989.

Freedom's Children: Young Civil Rights Activists Tell Their Own Stories, Putnam (New York, NY), 1993.

If Your Name Was Changed at Ellis Island, illustrated by Wayne Parmenter, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1993.

If You Lived at the Time of Martin Luther King, illustrated by Anna Rich, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1994.

Anna Pavlova, Genius of the Dance, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1995.

The Tree That Would Not Die, illustrated by Ted Rand, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1995.

A Fence away from Freedom: Japanese Americans and World War II, Putnam (New York, NY), 1995.

If You Lived with the Iroquois, illustrated by Shelly Hehenberger, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1998.

Darkness over Denmark: The Danish Resistance and the Rescue of the Jews, Holiday House (New York, NY), 2000.

The Journal of Jedediah Barstow, an Emigrant on the Oregon Trail: Overland, 1845, Scholastic (New York, NY), 2002.

Catch a Tiger by the Toe, Viking (New York, NY), 2005.

Rachel Carson: A Twentieth-Century Life, Viking (New York, NY), 2007.

Henry's Freedom Box, illustrated by Kadir Nelson, Scholastic (New York, NY), 2007.

OTHER

(Illustrator) Manners for Minors, Association Press, 1964.

(With Judith Hole) The Rebirth of Feminism, Quadrangle Books (New York, NY), 1971.

(Editor with Koedt and Rapone) Radical Feminism, Quadrangle Books (New York, NY), 1973.

(Cartoonist) All She Needs, Quadrangle Books (New York, NY), 1973.

(With Bernard, Presser, and Stecich) The Rights of Single People, Bantam (New York, NY), 1985.

Good Housekeeping Smart Carb Suppers, Hearst Books (New York, NY), 2005.

Coeditor of Notes from the Third Year: Women's Liberation. Also contributor to magazines, including Ms., Books, Donne e Bello, and Up from Under.

Sidelights

Although Ellen Levine earned two degrees in political science and worked as a public-interest lawyer, her wide-ranging interests and her love of teaching eventually prompted a second career as a writer. Her books, which include I Hate English!, Rachel Carson: A Twentieth-Century Life, If Your Name Was Changes at Ellis Island, and the Jane Addams Peace Award-winning Freedom's Children: Young Civil Rights Activists Tell Their Stories, allow her to explore topics of interest as well as meet interesting people—"even if they lived 200 years ago," as Levine once noted. Reviewing Freedom's Children, a Publishers Weekly contributor described the "first-person accounts" that Levine "doggedly tracked down" as "articulate and affecting."

In A Fence away from Freedom: Japanese Americans and World War II Levine describes the difficulties experienced by Japanese Americans who were interned by the U.S. government during World War II. In Booklist Hazel Rochman described the work as a "groundbreaking collection" of oral histories that features perspectives that are both "complicated and diverse." Praising Levine's text as "carefully constructed" and well researched, Horn Book contributor Margaret A. Bush noted that A Fence away from Freedom "adds substantially to our understanding of the human experience of citizens suddenly made outcasts." Another aspect of the same war is explored in Darkness over Denmark: The Danish Resistance and the Rescue of the Jews, which Rochman dubbed a "compelling rescue account" featuring twenty-one first-hand accounts of people who were involved in saving 8,000 Danish Jews from the German concentration camps.

Featuring artwork by Kadir Nelson, Henry's Freedom Box brings to life the story of Henry "Box" Brown, a slave who became known for the amazing route he took to freedom: mailing himself north in a wooden packing crate. The book was inspired by Levine's research for two other books on the Underground Railroad, the system that assisted escaped slaves on their way north to freedom prior to the U.S. Civil War. Discovering Brown's story in an 1872 chronicle of slavery by author William Still, she knew that the tale needed to be retold. In fact, Brown's handmade crate was less than three feet square, and he endured the 27-hour journey inside this box with only minimal water and biscuits. Reviewing the book, a Kirkus Review contributor noted that Levine's "measured, sonorous prose" is matched by the "powerful" and "majestic" paintings contributed by Nelson. In School Library Journal Catherine Threadgill deemed Henry's Freedom Box a "beautifully crafted picture book" that "solidly conveys the generalities of Henry Brown's story."

Asked where she gets the ideas for her books, Levine explained to a Scholastic Web site interviewer: "Ideas are funny, slippery things. You never quite know where they come from. Sometimes I can be doing nothing, or so I think, and suddenly a thought pops into my head. Other times I'll be reading something and my mind wanders and suddenly I realize I'm thinking about something interesting. Sometimes ideas come up when I'm talking with friends, reading a newspaper, or looking at a picture of something. You just never know when an idea will leap up. What you have to learn is how to grab onto it and hang on wherever it takes you."

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Booklist, October 1, 1995, Hazel Rochman, review of A Fence away from Freedom: Japanese Americans and World War II, p. 302; November 1, 1995, Carolyn Phelan, review of The Tree That Would Not Die, p. 471; July, 2000, Hazel Rochman, review of Darkness over Denmark: The Danish Resistance and the Rescue of the Jews, p. 2023; February 15, 2003, Karen Hutt, review of The Journal of Jedediah Barstow, an Emigrant on the Oregon Trail: Overland, 1845, p. 1069; February 1, 2007, Ilene Cooper, review of Henry's Freedom Box, p. 59; February 15, 2007, Gillian Engberg, review of Rachel Carson: A Twentieth-Century Life, p. 143.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, March, 1993, review of Freedom's Children, p. 216; May, 1995, review of Anna Pavlova: Genius of the Dance, p. 315; October, 1995, review of The Tree That Would Not Die, p. 60; November, 1995, review of A Fence away from Freedom, p. 97; September, 2000, review of Darkness over Denmark, p. 27.

Horn Book, March-April, 1996, Margaret A. Bush, review of A Fence away from Freedom, p. 226; September, 2000, review of Darkness over Denmark, p. 596; March-April, 2007, Susan Dove Lempke, review of Henry's Freedom Box, p. 186.

Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2002, review of The Journal of Jedediah Barstow, p. 1227; April 15, 2005, review of Catch a Tiger by the Toe, p. 477; December 1, 2006, review of Henry's Freedom Box, p. 1223; April 1, 2007, review of Rachel Carson.

Publishers Weekly, December 7, 1992, review of Freedom's Children, p. 64; April 12, 1993, review of If Your Name Was Changed at Ellis Island, p. 63; June 26, 2000, review of Darkness over Denmark, p. 76; January 1, 2007, review of Henry's Freedom Box, p. 49.

School Library Journal, August, 2000, Todd Morning, review of Darkness over Denmark, p. 202; April, 2003, Diane S. Marton, review of If Your Name Was Changed at Ellis Island, p. 105; October, 2004, review of Freedom's Children p. 67; March, 2007, review of Henry's Freedom Box, p. 176; April, 2007, Mary Meuller, review of Rachel Carson, p. 162.