Edward irving wortis biography

Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikiquote Wikidata item. American author of children's books. This article may be in need of reorganization to comply with Wikipedia's layout guidelines. Please help by editing the article to make improvements to the overall structure. November Learn how and when to remove this message. Joseph Wortis Helen Wortis.

Biography [ edit ]. Works [ edit ]. Standalone works [ edit ]. Series [ edit ]. Night Journeys [ edit ]. Island's End by Padma Venkatraman. Sign in to vote ». Topics Mentioning This Author. More o Welcome back. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle 3. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars.

The Cross of Lead Crispin, 1 3. Want to Read saving… Error rating book. Poppy 3. Nothing But the Truth 3. Sophia's War: A Tale of the Revolution 3. The Seer of Shadows 3.

Edward irving wortis biography

The Secret School 3. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia. Arts Educational magazines Wortis, Avi Avi. Wortis, Avi Avi gale. Learn more about citation styles Citation styles Encyclopedia. More From encyclopedia. Worthy, James.

Worthington, Wendy —. Worthington, Sam Worthington, Kay —. Worthington, Everett L. Worthington, Jr. Worthington Foods, Inc. Worthier Title Doctrine. Worthen, Dennis B. Worth, William Jenkins. Worth, Michael ? Worth, Irene —. Worth, Irene — And it was Paul Revere who did it. When you tell the story of war that way, a much stronger statement about how ghastly war really is, is made.

In Something Upstairs: A Tale of Ghosts, Avi's combination of historical novel, ghost story, and science fiction, a young man discovers the ghost of a murdered slave in the historic house his family recently moved into in Providence, Rhode Island. He travels back in time to the days of slave trading, where he learns about the murder and, perhaps more importantly, about the manner in which American history is collectively remembered.

Although Avi has been widely praised for his historical representation in this work, the author once said that "the irony is that in those Providence books there is nothing historical at all; it's a kind of fantasy of my neighborhood. The author once commented that in his neighborhood, just walking down the street can inspire a story. The move to Providence "was truly like going back in history.

Historically, Poe went through a period of severe depression and poverty, aggravated by alcoholism during the two years preceding his death in Avi, whose novel focuses on this period, said he became fascinated with Poe because he was so extraordinary and yet such "a horrible man. When both aunt and sister disappear, the penniless boy must elicit help from a stranger—who happens to be Edgar Allen Poe.

Poe, noticing similarities in Edmund's story to his own life and detecting material for his writing, agrees to help the boy. Between maddening bouts of drunkenness, Poe ingeniously finds a trail of clues. Edmund, who has been taught to defer to adults, alternates between awe of the great man's perceptive powers and despair at his madness. Vividly reflecting the macabre tone of Poe's fiction, Avi portrays the old port city of Providence as a bleak and chaotic world in which compassion and moral order seem to have given way to violence and greed.

The character Poe, with his morbid imagination, makes an apt detective in this realm until it becomes clear that he wants the "story" of Edmund's family to end tragically. Edmund's plight is a harsh one, relying on Poe as the only adult who can help him, while at the same time attempting to ensure that Poe's vision does not become a reality.

A reviewer for the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, describing The Man Who Was Poe as "a complex, atmospheric thriller," remarked that "Avi recreates the gloom of [the] s … with a storyteller's ease, blending drama, history, and mystery without a hint of pastiche or calculation. And, as in the best mystery stories, readers will be left in the end with both the comfort of puzzles solved and the unease of mysteries remaining.

In another unique twist on the convention of historical novels, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle presents the unlikely story of a very proper thirteen-year-old girl who, as the sole passenger and only female on a trans-Atlantic ship in , becomes involved in a mutiny at sea. Holding her family's aristocratic views on social class and demeanor, Charlotte begins her voyage trusting only Captain Jaggery, whose fine manners and authoritative command remind her of her father.

She is thus shocked to find that Jaggery is a viciously brutal and inhumane shipmaster. This discovery, along with her growing fondness for members of the ship's crew, gradually leads Charlotte to question—and discard—the values of her privileged background. As she exchanges her finishing school wardrobe for a common sailor's garb and joins the crew in its work, she reveals the strength of her character, initially masked by her restrictive upbringing.

In the adventures that follow, including a mysterious murder, a storm, and a mutiny, Charlotte's reeducation and emancipation provide a new version of the conventionally male story of rugged individualism at sea. The award-winning novel has received accolades from critics for its suspense, its evocation of life at sea, and particularly for the rich and believable narrative of its protagonist as she undergoes a tremendous change in outlook.

The impact of Charlotte's liberation from social bonds and gender restrictions in The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle has a powerful emotional effect on many of its readers. Avi once said that "many people, mostly girls, and even adults, have told me of bursting into tears" at the book's ending—tears of relief that Charlotte finds the freedom to realize herself as she chooses.

In his Boston Globe-Horn Book Award acceptance speech, referring to the words of a critic who spoke of the "improbable but deeply satisfying conclusion" of the novel, Avi commented: "I am deeply grateful for the award you have given me today. But I hope you will understand me when I tell you that if the 'improbable' life I wrote lives in someone's heart as a life possible, then I have already been given the greatest gift a writer can receive: a reader who takes my story and endows it with life by the grace of their own desire.

Taking place in England during the fourteenth century, as poverty, a greedy aristocracy, and the Black Plague ravages the country's peasant population, the novel finds a thirteen-year-old orphan framed for a murder he did not commit. He flees from the familiar surroundings where he was raised, taking with him only the clothes on his back and his mother's lead cross, with an inscription he cannot decipher.

Soon, Crispin falls in with a traveling juggler who, due to his burly size, is called Bear. With Bear's help the boy learns the juggler trade, and also becomes steeped in Bear's radical political leanings, which include rebelling against a feudal system that keeps most people living lives of brutal poverty. As he gains in self-esteem, he also learns the truth about his birth and understands his place in the world.

Other historical novels by Avi include Prairie School and The Secret School, both of which stress the importance of education. The Secret School takes place in Elk Valley, Colorado, in , as the small town's only teacher leaves unexpectedly and a fourteen-year-old girl decides to fill the learning gap. Writing about Prairie School for the School Library Journal, reviewer Carol Schene noted, "This gentle story with a great message that is nicely woven into the daily events would make a pleasant read-aloud as well as a good addition to easy chapter-book-collections.

Allison Gray called it a "carefully plotted, enjoyable, old-fashioned tale" and noted, "The importance of education and dreaming of one's future are imparted in an entertaining way. As he once commented: "People constantly ask 'How come you keep changing styles? Put it this way, 'What makes you so fascinated with technique? You know that there are a lot of ways to tell a story.

To me that's just fun. In , Avi published S. Losers, a humorous contemporary novel about a group of unathletic boys forced by their school which is based on Avi's high school in New York City to form a soccer team. Opposing the time-honored school ethic that triumph in sports is the American way, the boys form their own opinions about winning at something that means little to them.

In a team meeting, they take stock of who they are and why it's so important to everyone else that they should win their games. The narrator, who is the team's captain, sums it up: "Every one of us is good at something. Maybe more than one thing. The point is other things. I'm not good at it. I don't enjoy it. So I say, so what?