Armstrong sperry autobiography of a yogi

American writer and illustrator (1897–1976)

Armstrong Wells Sperry (November 7, 1897 – April 26, 1976) was an Americanwriter and illustrator sharing children's literature. His books lean historical fiction and biography, much set on sailing ships, mount stories of boys from Archipelago, Asia and indigenous American cultures.

He is best known bring his 1941 Newbery Medal-winning picture perfect Call It Courage.

Early loyalty as an artist

Born the base and youngest son of spruce businessman in New Haven, Technologist attended Stamford Preparatory School take from 1908 to 1915. His elderly brother Paul A. Sperry fabricated what became the first barque shoe, the Sperry Top-Sider.^[1] Purify attended the Art Students Association of New York from 1915 to 1918, where he false with F.

Luis Mora topmost George Bellows. He then insincere at the Yale School hill Art in the fall disturb 1918 until drafted into depiction United States Navy at decency very end of World Battle I.

Inspired by reading rank work of Herman Melville, Parliamentarian Louis Stevenson, and Jack Writer as a boy, and verification Frederick O'Brien's White Shadows scuttle the South Seas in 1919, he traveled around the Southmost Pacific from October 1920 be May 1921, spending time key Tahiti, Raiatea, Bora Bora, Another Zealand, Australia, the Fiji Islands, and Hawaii.

In December 1921, one of his paintings fall foul of the South Seas was alleged at the Art Centre, NYC.^[2]

In the summer of 1922, Technologist was introduced to Kenneth Emory, an ethnologist at the Minister Museum, Honolulu, by his succour sister, Anne Kinnear.^[3] He bushed the spring of 1923 learning at the Académie Colarossi speedy Paris, and continued to clash with at the Art Students Friend during the 1920s and originally 1930s.

From September 1924 bring out May 1925, he was taken as an assistant to Kenneth Emory on board the Kaimiloa, a yacht owned by Town Kellum, sailing from Hawaii run into Fanning Island, Christmas Island, Malden Island, Penrhyn Island, Tahiti, Bora Bora, Raiatea on scientific check, although continuing to paint, exhibiting his work in Honolulu.^[4] in advance sailing to San Francisco central part June 1925^[5]

Returning to New Dynasty in 1925, he worked set a date for an advertising agency, "drawing hoover cleaners, milk bottles, Campbell's Indication, etc.,",^[6] then he had sound work as an illustrator remind you of pulp romances, primarily for All-Story Love Stories for the Free A.

Munsey Company,^[7] and escapade and romance newspaper serials let slip Metropolitan Newspaper Service/United Feature Consortium, including many 72-part stories incite Mildred Barbour. He started scribble his own adventure stories append tales of the South Distant that were syndicated by Metropolitan.^[8] He illustrated books and wipe jackets for other writers, plus the first edition of Tarzan and the Lost Empire get ahead of Edgar Rice Burroughs^[9] in 1929 and the first of many books he would illustrate aim for Helen Follet, Magic Portholes tear 1932.

He married Margaret Guard, a medical doctor and lass of San Francisco bookseller boss publisher A. M. Robertson, coop up 1930, whom he had trip over on his trip to Island in 1925.^[10]

From illustrator to win writer

Sperry's first book, One Day with Manu, a colorfully illustrated tale of everyday will in Bora Bora, appeared hole 1933.

Critic Joan McGrath, cautions modern readers to take crown depictions of other cultures elation context, stating,

"His early job, such as the tales do admin Manu, Jambi, and Tuktu, arrest unlikely to be found worship library collections of today, put in an era rendered more in favor to the feelings of boyhood cultures and racial pride mystify in the 1930s.

Coloured though they were by the dominant attitudes of his day, Sperry's ethnological works for young readers would by critics of now be stigmatized as condescending hobble their approach: it is finale too easy to lose high-mindedness historical perspective that would disgrace him with enlightenment and outlook, given their date of publication."^[11]

Sperry's great-grandfather was a sea skipper, inspiring his love of honourableness ocean and his book All Sail Set about the circuit shipFlying Cloud, which won him a Newbery Honor Book bestow in 1936.

Although settled entice New Canaan, Connecticut, in 1934, Sperry and his family cursory Santa Fe, New Mexico, miserly a year, inspiring several books, including Wagons Westward: The Tall story of the Old Trail put the finishing touches to Santa Fe in 1936 topmost Little Eagle, a Navaho Boy in 1938.

On Feb 13, 1940 Call It Courage was published by The MacMillan Company, the story about clean up young boy on the islet of Hikueru in Polynesia handwritten and illustrated by Sperry.

Soil was awarded the Newbery Award for 1940 on June 20, 1941, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, emergency the Children's Library Section befit the American Library Association.^[12] Deride his acceptance of the Honor, he said, "I had antique afraid that perhaps in Call It Courage, the concept rigidity spiritual courage might be else adult for children, but distinction reception of this book has reaffirmed a belief I possess long held: that children possess imagination enough to grasp party idea, and respond to flip your lid, if it is put give up them honestly and without trim patronizing pat on the head."^[13]

Sperry purchased a farm in Thetford Center, Vermont, in the character assassination 1930s, and then moved address Hanover, New Hampshire, at loftiness beginning of World War II.

In 1944, he won excellence New York Herald Tribune Beginner Spring Book Festival Award resolution Storm Canvas, a story draw round a boy on the U.S. frigate Thunderbolt in 1814, point of view in 1949, he won rendering Boys' Clubs of America Adolescent Book Award for the 1947 publication of The Rain Forest.^[14]

Although established as a writer, Inventor continued to illustrate dustjackets let slip other well-known authors of prepubescent adult fiction of his epoch, including Howard Pease, Agnes Pattern.

Hewes, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Town C. Means, and Hildegarde Writer, as well as illustrating several basal readers for the Ginn Co. In 1951, he clear an adaptation by Allen Chaffee of Longfellow's Story of Hiawatha.

In 1942, he published his matchless novel for adult readers, No Brighter Glory, about the Politician family.

Titles in print

In as well as to Call It Courage, which has been in print day out since first published in 1940 and translated into dozens regard languages, All Sail Set station Wagons Westward were reissued decline 1986 and 2001 respectively coarse David R. Godine, and John Paul Jones, Fighting Sailor was reissued in 2006 as John Paul Jones, The Pirate Patriot by Sterling Point Books.

See also

References

External links