 |
|
| Jim Murphy (photo: Joy Yagid) |
|
Children's book author and editor Jim Murphy died suddenly on May 1 at age 74. He was a two-time Newbery Honor winner, a National Book Award Finalist, a winner of the Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal, and recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for his lifetime contribution to young adult literature.
His publisher HarperCollins recounted that the Radcliffe summer publishing program and a chance encounter earlier with a book banned by a teacher "set him on a lifetime of writing and the pursuit of a publishing career. And, after a brief and scary detour as a construction worker working on the 47th story of a midtown Manhattan skyscraper, Jim returned his sights to children's books and never looked back." He published "carefully crafted, rigorously researched nonfiction books, studded with rich detail and deep history and containing the voices and experiences of eyewitnesses."
They included The Boys' War: Confederate and Union Soldiers Talk About the Civil War (Clarion, 1990); The Great Fire (Scholastic, 2001), about the Chicago fire; An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 (Clarion, 2003), the country's first epidemic; Breakthrough!: How Three People Saved "Blue Babies" and Changed Medicine Forever (Clarion, 2015), about the African American "janitor" who developed a groundbreaking operation to repair heart defects in babies and oversaw the white heart surgeon from Johns Hopkins who performed them; and Truce (Scholastic, 2009), about the Christmas truce on the front lines of World War I.
Reflecting on his life, Murphy said, "Life is made up of journeys. Some are physical, but most are interior journeys of the heart and soul. The important thing is to face each with a positive attitude and try to learn about the world and... to laugh and have fun along the way."