Free oversized Lois Lenski bookmark, while supplies last. They were freebies that went with our Lois Lenski kickstarter.

Celebrating the 300th year anniversary of Mary Wilson Wallace’s birth, 1720 to 2020.

Ocean-Born Mary was a real person. She was born in mid-ocean, while her parents, a young Scotch-Irish couple, were voyaging to American in 1720. Shortly after her birth, the ship was captured by pirates. The sight of the new-born babe so moved the pirate captain that he named the baby Mary and allowed the immigrant band to proceed on its voyage unharmed. The child grew up to be called Ocean-Born Mary.

Lois Lenski came across this colorful New England legend, traced its historic origins with delight and wrote an absorbing story around this fascinating woman. It is a powerful tale, rich in flavor and humor, and valuable for its true picture of Portsmouth and the surrounding New Hampshire countryside fifty years before the American Revolution.

Lenski also wrote an afterword, dated May 1, 1939, about her research on Mary.

Lois Lenski was a renowned author and illustrator of children’s and young adult literature. Born in 1893, in Springfield, Ohio, Lois was a voracious reader from a young age, a passion that never left her. During her college studies at Ohio State University, where she trained to be a teacher, she took as many art courses as she could make time for and was the art editor for the university yearbook. Upon graduating, instead of teaching, Lois became an art student in New York, in preparation for what she hoped would be a career in fine art. There she met Arthur Covey, a painter and muralist, whom she married in 1921.

By the time of her death in 1974, Lois wrote and illustrated well over one hundred books for children of various ages.

“We need to know our country better. We need to know not only our own region, where our roots are firmly put down, but other regions where people different from ourselves—people of different races, faiths, cultures and backgrounds…..When we know them, understand how they live and why, we will think of them as ‘people’—human beings like ourselves.”
—Lois Lenski, Newbery Award acceptance speech, June 18, 1946

Biography condensed from the Lois Lenski Covey Foundation website

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Lois Lenski books

Ocean-Born Mary paperback

Phebe Fairchild Her Book

Coal Camp Girl