Jacqueline Briggs Martin
Beloved writer of "Snowflake Bentley"
2008 Winner, Sterling North Award for Excellence in Children's Literature

Featured Speaker, Saturday, Oct. 4, EPAC
"Saving the Glassies and the Agates: A Writer's Belfry"

This Maine-born author who now lives in Iowa is the author of such classic children’s picture books as “Snowflake Bentley,” the true tale of a self-taught Vermont man who first visually captured images of snowflakes with a camera in the late 1880s, and “The Lamp, the Ice and a Boat Called Fish,” a true tale of Inupiat survival in the deep, cold Arctic of the early 1900s. Jacqueline Briggs Martin – a three-time winner of the Maine Library Association’s Lupine Award – is the author of 17 books for children. “I have always loved stories as much as some people love watching elephants, riding bicycles, or eating chocolate ice cream,” the author writes on her web site. “As I travel and visit with students and others I am surprised and touched by the variety of our lives, the kindnesses we show to each other, the things that make us laugh, the ways we get through sadness, and the stories that are part of all our lives.” She grew up on a Maine farm with three brothers and two sisters, her parents, a great-great-uncle, and her grandparents. “Even when I was a child I loved the sound of words,” the author writes. She even marveled at “the sounds of names of the cows on our farm, such as Riverfat Blanche Wisconsin,” although Jacqueline and her fellow students didn’t do much writing in school and Jacqueline didn’t imagine that one day she would write books. These days, such magical tales as “Chicken Joy on Redbean Road,” “Banjo Granny,” “On Sand Island,” and “The Finest Horse in Town” flow from her pen. She and her husband Rich live in Mount Vernon, Iowa. They are the parents of two grown children. Her 1998 book about the real-life, 19th Century farmer-photographer Wilson Bentley won the prestigious Caldecott Award for the book’s illustrator, Mary Azarian

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