Some Writer: The Story of E. B. White

Some Writer: The Story of E. B. White
by Melissa Sweet
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, Youth Biography, 161 p.
I have read a bunch of biographies of authors before, and after you have read a few you start to feel that someone has to have a tortured life to be a good writer.  E.B. White proves that hypothesis  wrong.  He grew up in a loving home.  He started writing early, winning his first writing competition at nine, and then regularly submitted poems to magazines until he went to college.  After college he took a road trip with a friend and ended up as a reporter in San Francisco.  Later he returned east and wrote for Harper's Magazine and the New Yorker.  He eventually moved with his wife and family to a farm in Maine where he wrote Stewart Little, Charlotte's Web, and The Trumpet of the Swan, all of which, to my knowledge, have never been out of print.

This is a great choice for a child who is interested in becoming a writer, or for anyone who ever loved one of E.B. White's books.  It is also a good choice for a child who is a reluctant reader but who needs to read a biography more than 100 pages long.  That is because it is really well written and is illustrated with beautiful color collages that make it both appealing and a very fast read.