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Swiacki Children's Literature Festival: Joseph Bruchac & Melissa Sweet

Teacher resources collected on Authors and Illustrators that have attended the festival

Biographies

Joseph Bruchac

For over forty years, Joseph Bruchac has been creating literature and music that reflect his indigenous heritage and traditions. He is a proud Nulhegan Abenaki citizen and respected elder among his people. He is the author of more than 120 books for children and adults. His best selling, Keepers of the Earth: Native American Stories and Environmental Activities for Children series, with its remarkable integration of science and folklore, continue to receive critical acclaim and to be used in classrooms throughout the country. His honors include a Rockefeller Humanities fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Writing Fellowship for Poetry, the Cherokee Nation Prose Award, the Knickerbocker Award, the Hope S. Dean Award for Notable Achievement in Children's Literature and both the 1998 Writer of the Year Award and the 1998 Storyteller of the Year Award from the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. In 1999, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas.

 

Melissa Sweet

Melissa Sweet has illustrated over 100 books as well as many toys, puzzles, and games for eeBoo. Her work has been in magazines, on greeting cards and as drawings on her living room walls. She has received numerous awards including two Caldecott honors: A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Willaims and for The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus , both by Jen Bryant.

Melissa has written four books:Carmine: a Little More Red , a New York Times Best Illustrated book; Tupelo Rides the Rails;  Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy's Parade, a Sibert Award winner for informational books, an NCTE Orbis Pictus winner for outstanding nonfiction, and the Cook Prize for STEM picture book. Her most recent book, Some Writer! The Story of E.B. White  was a New York Times Best Seller and garnered an NCTE Orbis Pictus award and a Boston Globe–Horn Book honor for nonfiction.

Joseph Bruchac's Work

Picture Book

Middle grade

Young Adult

Melissa Sweet's Work

Picture Book