Jean Fritz

Jean Guttery Fritz (November 16, 1915 – May 14, 2017) was an American children's writer best known for American biography and history. She won the Children's Legacy Literature Award for her career contribution to American children's literature in 1986. and died in May 2017 at the age of 101.

Early life Fritz was born to American Presbyterian missionaries Arthur Minton Guttery and the former Myrtle Chaney in Hankow, China, where she lived until she was twelve.

She graduated from Wheaton College in Massachusetts in 1937 and married Michael Fritz in 1941. They had two children, David and Andrea.

Career Fritz's writing career started with the publication of several short stories in Humpty Dumpty magazine early in the 1950s. Her first book, Bunny Hopwell's First Spring, was published in 1954 and followed in 1955 by 121 Pudding Street, a work based on her own children. She often wrote westerns and other stories of frontier America because Arthur told her stories of American heroes as she was growing up. Her first historical novel for children was The Cabin Faced West (1958). Her autobiography, Homesick, My Own Story (1982), won a National Book Award for Young People's Literature in the Children's Fiction category and was a runner-up for the Newbery Medal. Bully for You, Teddy Roosevelt (1990) The Big Book for Peace (Dutton, 1990), illus. Teri Sloat Surprising Myself (1992) The World in 1492 (1992) George Washington's Mother (1992) Around the World in a Hundred Years (1993) Just a Few Words, Mr. Lincoln (1993) Harriet Beecher Stowe and The Beecher Preachers (1994) You Want Women to Vote, Lizzie Stanton? (1995) Why Not Lafayette? (1999) Leonardo's Horse (2001) The Lost Colony of Roanoke (2004)