Award-winning
author Fredrick L. McKissack, who with his wife and partner Patricia
created more than 100 books profiling African-American heroes and
illuminating aspects of the African-American experience, died of heart
failure on Sunday, April 28. He was 73.
McKissack was born and grew up in Nashville, Tenn., where
he earned a B.S. from Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State
University (now Tennessee State University) in 1964, following military
service with the U.S. Marine Corps from 1957-1960.
He embarked on a career as a civil engineer for several years and
eventually settled in St. Louis, Mo., with Patricia (his childhood
sweetheart), where he owned his own contracting company. Their family
grew to include three sons. In the 1980s, McKissack began collaborating
with Patricia, a writer and teacher, and they formed their company
All-Writing Services. As a writing team they adopted a strong focus on
African-American themes for young readers, largely inspired by a
shortage of such books in the marketplace. Their early 1990s biography
series, Great African Americans (Enslow), included volumes on Frederick
Douglass, Marian Anderson, Paul Robeson, and many others.
Lee Bennett Hopkins:
FREDRICK L. MCKISSACK died April 28, at the age of 73. Many of us know his writings with his wife, Patricia.
Fred and Patricia also wrote poetry together including “Share the
Adventure” which they did for The Children’s Book Council as the
National Children’s Book Week Poem, l993.
I was honored to reprint the work in my collection WONDERFUL WORDS
(Simon & Schuster) as well as knowing Fred and Patricia for many
years sharing the same agency.
from “Share the Adventure: “WHAM! The book slams shut…”
Fredrick McKissack was such a generous and caring spirit.
His research was impeccable and in his partnership with Patricia, he
made a great contribution to children’s literature and African American
history. RIP.
Very sad news…
Below is an excerpt from an interview with the McKissacks:
No shortage of ideas
Patricia: We get our ideas for our books
from many different places — from childhood experiences…when our
children were growing up, we have incidents that happened that have
given us ideas for books like Messy Bessie. We have the idea that comes out of history — our own lived history plus the history of the past.
So we get them from just comments sometimes, just overhear a comment
and say, “Oh, wow! That sounds like a good book.” You know, tell the
truth no matter how much it hurts other people and out of that came the
honest to goodness truth, so books come from all kinds of places.
Frederick: I guess we have said over and over that
ideas are two different natures. One is the instant idea that just seems
to come to you and it really doesn’t take any time whatsoever. And the
other type of idea is one that you work on and work on and work on.
Patricia: We’ve even named them — the Athenian idea that kind of pops right into your head like the birth of Athena, and the mustard seed idea that kind of grows slowly over time and over a period. So, out of our ideas has even come stories.
Patricia and Fredrick McKissack are
the authors of numerous award-winning books, including REBELS AGAINST
SLAVERY: AMERICAN SLAVE REVOLTS and BLACK HANDS, WHITE SAILS: THE STORY
OF AFRICAN AMERICAN WHALERS, both Coretta Scott King Honor Books, and
SOJOURNER TRUTH: AIN’T I A WOMAN? a Coretta Scott King Honor Book and
winner of the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award. Patricia and Fredrick
McKissack lived in St. Louis, Missouri.
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