Norma Farber

Updated on Sep 29, 2024

Edit

Comment

Name Norma Farber Role Writer		Education Radcliffe College

Died March 21, 1984, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States Nominations National Book Award for Children's Books Books As I Was Crossing Boston C, How Does It Feel to Be Old?, The boy who longed fo, A birth in the family, How the Hibernators Came to

Sophie Cabot Black: Writers Studio Reading Series

Norma Holzmann Farber (6 August 1909 – 21 March 1984) was an American children's book writer and poet. The Poetry Society of America presents the Norma Farber First Book Award, which is awarded for a first book of original poetry written by an American.

Life

She was born in Boston in 1909, daughter of G. Augustus and Augusta Schon Holzman. She attended Girls' Latin School. She earned degrees from Wellesley College, and Radcliffe College.

On 3 July 1928, she married Sidney Farber, (died 1973) the founder of the Children's Cancer Research Foundation (now the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute) in Boston. According to her obituary published in the New York Times, she was also a classical soprano.

Farber authored six books of poems and 18 children's books. Her poetry was first published in the 1940s, and she was still active in writing until her death from vascular disease in 1984. She was survived by four children.

Awards

Belgium's Premier Prix in singing in 1936

Golden Rose Award

As I Was Crossing Boston Common, was nominated for a National Book Award in 1975

Poetry

Look to the Rose: Poems. s.n. 1958.

A Desperate Thing: Marriage is a Desperate Thing. Poems. Plowshare Press. 1973. ISBN 978-0-87368-202-2.

Something Further: Poems. Kylix Press. 1979. ISBN 978-0-914408-10-9.

Shekhina: Forty Poems. Capstone Editions. 1984. ISBN 978-0-9610662-2-2.

A Birth in the Family: Nativity Poems. El León Literary Arts. 2003. ISBN 978-0-88739-538-3.

Juvenile poetry

These Small Stones: Poems. Myra Cohn Livingston (illus.). Harper & Row. 1987. ISBN 978-0-06-024013-4.

When it Snowed that Night. Petra Mathers (illus.). HarperCollins. 1993. ISBN 978-0-06-021707-5.

All Those Mothers at the Manger. Megan Lloyd (illus.). Harper & Row. 1985. ISBN 978-0-06-021869-0.

Small wonders: poems. Kazue Mizumura (illus.). Coward, McCann & Geoghegan. 1979. ISBN 978-0-698-20484-3.

Never say ugh to a bug. Jose Aruego (illus.). Greenwillow Books. 1979. ISBN 978-0-688-80140-3.

As I was Crossing Boston Common. Arnold Lobel (illus.). E. P. Dutton. 1991. ISBN 978-0-525-25960-2.

Juvenile fiction

Mercy Short: A Winter Journal, North Boston, 1692-93. Dutton,. 1982. ISBN 978-0-525-44014-7. first printing 1973

The Boy who Longed for a Lift. Brian Selznick (illus.). HarperCollins. 1997. ISBN 978-0-06-027108-4.

Anthology

Poets of Today, Norma Farber. "The Hatch, Poems". Robert Pack. "The Irony of Joy, Poems". Louis Simpson. "Good News of Death, and Other Poems". Scribner. 1955.

References

Norma Farber Wikipedia

(Text) CC BY-SA