Katherine Paterson

Katherine Paterson is the consummate storyteller, a crafter of tales in which characters must deal with the most elemental hopes and fears in settings - be it a Chesapeake Bay island or the mountains of China - that are alternately blissful and beatific, terrifying and desperate. In a sensitive analysis of the novels and stories of this award-winning children's author, Gary D. Schmidt finds that Paterson is, in a subtle way, a didactic writer, informed by her hopeful and ethical vision of the future. Here is a writer, Schmidt argues, who does not shy away from horrendous topics - unwanted foster children, the death of a schoolchild's best friend, rape, murder, political intrigue, religious mania, and war. He finds that Paterson's books - among them the National Book Award-winning Master Puppeteer (1976) and The Great Gilly Hopkins (1978) and the Newberry Award-winning Bridge to Terabithia (1977) and Jacob Have I Loved (1980) - are successful when the reader journeys with the author through distressing situations and then arrives, in a moment of grace, at a place of spiritual enlightenment. Paterson's characters, Schmidt argues, search for fathers, for families, for love and accepta