E. L. KONIGSBURG Biography - Writers

 
 

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E. L. KONIGSBURG

Elaine Lobl Konigsburg (February 10, 1930 - ) is an American author and             
illustrator of children's books and young adult fiction. She is the only author     
to win the Newbery Medal and a Newbery Honor in the same year (1968), with her       
second and first books respectively: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E.       
Frankweiler and Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth.     
Kongisburg won a second Newbery Medal in 1997 for The View from Saturday, 29         
years later, the longest span between any two Newberys awarded to one author.       
                                                                                     
Born Elaine Lobl February 10, 1930, in New York, Konigsburg grew up in small         
towns in Pennsylvania, the second of three daughters. As valedictorian, she         
graduated high school in Farrell, Pennsylvania, and worked briefly as a             
bookkeeper in a wholesale meat plant to earn money for college. There she met       
the brother of one of the owners who would later become her husband, David           
Konigsburg.                                                                         
                                                                                     
Konigsburg enrolled in Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, and           
earned a degree in chemistry. After graduating, she married David Konigsburg, a     
graduate student in psychology. She entered graduate school in chemistry at the     
University of Pittsburgh, but after her husband attained his doctorate, they         
moved to Jacksonville, Florida, where Konigsburg worked as a science teacher at     
a school for girls. There she began to think about a new direction for her           
talents and also became the mother of three children. This new direction would       
begin after the family moved to Port Chester, New York, and she started art         
lessons and then began writing. Her first novel Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth,           
William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth was inspired by her daughter's experiences       
moving to a new home.