AdLit.org is a national multimedia project offering information and resources to the parents and educators of struggling adolescent readers and writers. AdLit.org is an educational initiative of WETA, the flagship public television and radio station in the nation's capital, and is funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and by the Ann B. and Thomas L. Friedman Family Foundation.
Bio
Born in New York City, Rosemary Wells grew up in a house "filled with books, dogs, and nineteenth-century music." "When I was two years old I began to draw and they saw right away the career that lay ahead of me and encouraged me every day of my life. As far back as I can remember, I did nothing but draw."
Rosemary Wells's career as an author and illustrator spans more than 30 years and 60 books, ranging from board books to young adult literature. She has won numerous awards, and has given young adult readers vivid historical fiction like Red Moon at Sharpsburg and Mary on Horseback: Three Mountain Stories, as well as great mysteries like The Man in the Woods and When No One Was Looking.
Her writing career has been a "pure delight," she says. "I regret only that I cannot live other lives parallel to my own. Writing is a lonely profession and I am a gregarious sort of person. I would like someday to work for the FBI. A part of me was never satisfied with years of tennis. I still yearned to play basketball."
Selected Books
from Rosemary Wells
Age Level: 12-14
A girl from the Shenandoah Mountains witnesses the devastation of war as a daughter and emerging scientist.
Age Level: 9-12
The voices of Abraham Lincoln's sons, Willie and Tad, are used effectively to reveal their father as both a man and as a leader during very difficult times.
Mary on Horseback: Three Mountain Stories
Age Level: 9-12
Three fictionalized narratives create a biography of Mary Breckenridge, the founder of the Frontier Nursing Service in Appalachia, and vividly detail the hardship of mountain life.
Age Level: 9-12
After witnessing a car accident, Helen follows a suspect into the woods. Did the suspect spot her? Did the police arrest the right person? Helen and her friend Pinky are going to find out.
Age Level: 14-16
Kathy is a promising young tennis star, but would she really kill to make it to the top?
Age Level: 9-12
The Great Depression changed everything for 11-year-old Oscar and his widowed dad. Oscar's prized model trains are sold, his dad leaves Illinois to find work in California, and Oscar begins an adventure through time and places after he jumps onto a model train.
