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Sonia Levitin

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Name
  
Sonia Levitin

Role
  
Novelist

Spouse
  

Sonia Levitin wwwscholasticcomteacherssitesdefaultfilesco

Children
  
Daniel Levitin, Shari Levitin

Awards
  
Edgar Award for Best Young Adult, Spur Award for Best Juvenile, National Jewish Book Award for Children's Literature

People also search for
  
Lloyd Levitin, Daniel Levitin, Katarina Ganslandt, Shari Levitin

Books
  
Boom town, Journey to America, The cure, Dream freedom, Nine for California

Journey to america by sonia levitin


Sonia Levitin (b. Berlin, August 18, 1934) is a German American novelist, artist, producer, Holocaust Survivor, and author of over forty novels and picture books for young adults and children, as well as several theatrical plays and published essays on various topics for adults.

Contents

Sonia Levitin httpsd2vtranz59kxr8cloudfrontnetsitesjwaor

Her book Incident at Loring Groves (1988) won an Edgar Allan Poe Award.

Boomtown by Sonia Levitin


Early life

Sonia Levitin was born in Berlin in 1934 under a Nazi controlled Germany. Being of Jewish descent, she managed to escape persecution by traveling with her mother and two sisters to Switzerland. Her father, a prominent clothing designer, escaped to New York City and then to Los Angeles where he would raise Sonia and her sisters. Levitin would later write several novels about struggling as an immigrant in the United States, these include: The Journey to America and Silver Days, a series about a family of German Jewish refugees who flee the horrors of the Holocaust.

Levitin, always an avid reader, attended University of California, Berkeley in 1952 where she would meet her husband, Loyd Levitin. The two married after only one year. She then completed a degree in education from the University of Pennsylvania.

Career

Levitin began as a publicity columnist for several newspapers, but after her first novel Journey to America became an instant classic, she began to pick up traction as a professional novelist. Levitin wrote numerous novels for young adults that oftentimes featured semi-autobiographical characters. The most common theme of her writing include courageous main characters faced with difficult challenges, who must "take charge" in order to overcome these obstacles. Her books often describe historical events and tragedies, especially toward Jewish people.

Painter

Levitin is also noted as being a talented painter. Her artwork was displayed in June 2015 for the first time to the public. And the inaugural art show, which was curated by Los Angeles event producer Anthony Angelini, took place at Christofle on Melrose Place in Beverly Hills, CA and was attended by several of the Los Angeles elite. The show featured 10 of Levitin's expressionist paintings which were never-before-seen in the public arena.

Awards

Levitin has won several awards for her writing including:

  • Edgar Allan Poe Award
  • National Jewish Book Award
  • Association of Jewish Libraries Sydney Taylor Award
  • Jewish Book Council Best Juvenile Fiction
  • American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults
  • Southern California Council on Literature for Children and Young People, Distinguished Body of Work Award
  • German Bishops’ Conference, Children’s Book Prize
  • PEN Los Angeles Award for Young Adult fiction
  • References

    Sonia Levitin Wikipedia


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