Anne Isaacs, born March 2, 1949, grew up in Buffalo, New York, and lived
there until she left to attend the University of Michigan where she studied
literature. As a child, she read widely and voraciously, sampling books from
her parents' collection and the public library. Louisa May Alcott's Little
Women made a particularly strong impression on her as she read and re-read
it many times. She also read many adult classics, such as Romeo and Juliet,
Lorna Doone, and The Caine Mutiny, but she did not read much
children's literature until she began reading to her own children. She claims
that this late introduction to the world of children's literature allowed her
to avoid making distinctions between stories for children and those for adults
and to apply the same standards to both. She does not simplify her writing for
children because she is confident that children can stretch and grow to read
and appreciate good writing.
Although she published a few poems at the age of ten in a city-wide magazine
of writing for school children, she did not seriously pursue creative writing
until 1989, when her daughter came home from school rebelling against the
boring "Pioneer Days" activities at her school. Her research into the
activities of girls on the frontier, which was inspired by the need for some
better stories for her daughter, led to her awardwinning picture book, Swamp
Angel, the story of Angelica Longrider, whose amazing accomplishments rival
those of Paul Bunyan. Illustrated by Paul A. Zelinsky, Swamp Angel was a
Caldecott Honor Book and an American Library Association Notable Book selection
in 1994.
After Swamp Angel, Isaacs turned toward a far more serious subject in
Torn Thread, a novel based on the World War II story of her
mother-in-law Eva Buchbinder Koplowicz. As she worked on this book, Isaacs
often thought that she may have been destined to tell her mother-in-law's
story, and by doing so reclaim her own lost family and increase understanding
of European Jewry. Although this was a painful novel to write, Isaacs feels
that it is important for her own and other children to hear the stories of
their past so that they know where they came from.
