Molly Bang, 2011's featured author/illustrator

Three-time Caldecott Honor Award winner Molly Bang, who has written and illustrated more than 30 books for children, is the featured author for Bookmarked! 2011, a celebration of the delights of children’s literature and the special joys of reading together. She will be the second recipient of the Lucy Daniels Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to children’s literature that supports social and emotional health.

For more information about Ms. Bang's appearances at Bookmarked!, click here. To visit the Lucy Daniels Center's YouTube Channel and view interview clips and a montage of her children's book illustrations, click here.

Ms. Bang is the author/illustrator of three Caldecott Honor Books: The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher (1981), Ten, Nine, Eight (1983), and When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry… (2000). She was also awarded The Boston-Globe/Horn Book Award for The Paper Crane (1985); the 2000 Giverny Award for best science picture book for Common Ground: The Water, Earth and Air We Share;  and the 2010 AAAS Prize for best science picture book for Living Sunlight: How Plants Bring the Earth to Life.

When Sophie Gets Angry and All of Me! A Book of Thanks (2009) have been featured on Lucy’s Book Club lists, and her philosophy as a children’s author reflects the purpose behind LBC and Bookmarked!: “Reading picture books together is one of the nicest ways to snuggle with your child, be close, and talk about things that are important,” she has said.

In crafting works that capture, as Publisher Weekly has noted, “the voice and feelings of a young child,” Ms. Bang has contributed to the body of children’s literature that “treats childhood emotions with respect.” In fact, Ms. Bang has cited Judith Viorst—Bookmarked! 2010’s featured author and the first recipient of the Lucy Daniels Award—as one of her inspirations.

Ms. Bang’s parents were both scientists: her father studied tropical diseases and diseases in marine animals; her mother discovered that birds can smell. Molly graduated from Wellesley College with a major in French literature, then spent a year and a half in Japan, teaching English and learning Japanese by living with a Japanese family. Once back in the US, she got a job as interpreter for Asahi newspaper reporters, covering the first manned Apollo mission to the moon from the reporters’ box as the rocket took off from Cape Canaveral. After receiving master’s degrees in Oriental Studies from the University of Arizona and Harvard, she began writing and illustrating children’s books.

Her first inclination, however, was just to draw. “All through the years I was growing up, my parents had given each other copies of books illustrated by the great British illustrator, Arthur Rackham, and I had spent hours and hours of my childhood looking at his pictures. I dreamed that someday I would make pictures as magical and entrancing as his,” Molly remembers. “After working for a year to develop a portfolio, I took my pictures to several publishers in New York. They told me that the illustrations ‘didn't fit’ any writer's writing, and that I should find my own stories.”

It was this unexpected rejection that led Ms. Bang to embark on the path that has brought her awards and acclaim. “…My first books [were] collections of folktales that I translated or collected and then illustrated. I have been writing and illustrating, mostly for children, ever since,” she says.

The birth of her daughter brought about another shift: “My early books were just stories I enjoyed, mostly based on folktales. Once I became a mother, I have been much more influenced by my daughter, Monika,” she explains. “It was because of her that I made Ten, Nine Eight, as well as Dawn and When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry. And of course I illustrated her series of books about Little Rat.”

In addition to her working on her own books, Ms. Bang enjoys doing workshops for students, teachers and parents that involve writing and illustration. She has written a book for adults about how the structure of pictures affects our emotions called Picture This: How Pictures Work as well as several books that teach young children about natural science.

Molly lives in Massachusetts and California with her growing family and is presently working on the third in a series of books about how sunlight affects the earth. For more information about her life and work, visit www.mollybang.com.