Charlotte Zolotow

• Name — Charlotte Zolotow • Birth Name — Charlotte Gertrude Shapiro • Born — 26 June 1915 • Birthplace — Norfolk, Virginia, U.S. • Died — 19 November 2013 • Place of death — Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, U.S. • Occupation — Editor, writer • Genre — Children's picture books, poetry • Children — Steve and Crescent • Website — charlottezolotow.com

Zolotow was born in Norfolk, Virginia. She studied writing with Helen C. White at the University of Wisconsin Madison from 1933 to 1936 and then moved to New York City, where she started at Harper & Bros as secretary to the children's books editor Ursula Nordstrom. She was married to Maurice Zolotow from 1938 until their divorce in 1969. Their daughter Ellen is writer Crescent Dragonwagon and their son is poker tournament champion Steve Zolotow. She lived in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, where she died, aged 98.

Zolotow's work was published by more than 20 different houses. She was an editor, and later publisher, at Harper & Row (which was called Harper & Brothers when she began to work there, and is now known as HarperCollins). The poem "Missing You" from River Winding appears in Best Friends, a collection of poems, and "People" from All That Sunlight appears in the collection More Surprises (both of these anthologies bear the emblem, "A Charlotte Zolotow Book"). She contributed a story called Enemies, illustrated by Ben Shecter, to The Big Book for Peace where she appears alongside other well-known authors and illustrators including Lloyd Alexander, Steven Kellogg and Trina Schart Hyman. One of Zolotow's titles most widely held in WorldCat libraries is When the Wind Stops, a picture book edited by Ursula Nordstrom and published in 1962 with illustrations by Joe Lasker. Subsequent editions were illustrated by Howard Knotts (1975) and Stefano Vitale (1995, a revised edition). In June 2014, the Children's Literature Association named the latter a runner-up for the Phoenix Picture Book Award, which annually recognizes a picture book with lasting value that did not win a major award 20 years earlier. "Books are considered not only for the quality of their illustrations, but for the way pictures and text work together." Zolotow's 1972 book William's Doll (illustrated by William Pène du Bois), about gender stereotypes, was adapted by composer Mary Rodgers and lyricist Sheldon Harnick for the children's album Free to Be... You and Me, and then for the subsequent television special. In 1998, the Cooperative Children's Book Center at UW Madison School of Education (CCBC) inaugurated the Charlotte Zolotow Award, "given annually to the author of the best picture book text published in the United States in the preceding year". (The American Library Association Caldecott Medal is given to the illustrator of an American children's picture book.)

Charlotte Zolotow was recorded at birth as Charlotte Gertrude Shapiro. She also worked under the names Sarah Abbott and Charlotte Bookman. The authorities additionally record the heading Charlotte Gertrude Shapiro. Her recorded language was English. She married Maurice Zolotow. 2 children are recorded: Crescent Dragonwagon and Steve Zolotow.

Charlotte Zolotow is recorded as writer, poet, publisher and editor-in-chief.