Happy Birthday, Katherine Paterson!

When you have a holiday birthday, you feel a special kinship with the other people who have them as well. (Mine is Valentine’s Day.) So when I heard that Katherine Paterson’s birthday is today, I gave a little cheer. What an awesome person to add to the holiday birthday team!

Check out Anita Silvey’s Children’s Book-a-Day Almanac for more info on Paterson’s life and works. I’d say she’s most famous for Bridge to Terabithia, the book that makes everyone cry. I most remember her for Jacob I Have Loved, which I found to be an emotionally complex book about jealous and love and self-loathing and bravery.

Silvey sums up Paterson’s work well here: “…she brought quality, consistency, and emotional intensity to everything she wrote. Clearly one of the most significant children’s book writers of the twentieth century, she continues to craft quality books that change the way her readers look at their world.”

Completely agree. Today, let’s raise a glass (of pumpkin juice?) to Katherine Paterson!