Laurie Thompson Lawlor :::
Laurie Thompson Lawlor
Graduated in 1971
Inducted in 1995
Laurie Thompson Lawlor, a 1971 graduate, is a children's author and teacher. Trained as a journalist at Northwestern University, she worked for many years as a freelance writer and editor before using her imagination and craft to create and write children's books. With many of her books selling over 200,000 copies, Lawlor says her greatest pleasure is seeing the impact her work has on children, the most demanding, vigilant, astonishing and rewarding readers of all. The Addie series of pioneer family adventures, created while unraveling Dakota homesteading stories told by her mother and grandmother, was named to the Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award List and received numerous other literary awards. What began as an investigation of family folklore evolved into a two-year research project that took her to the actual site of her great-grandparents' farm. How to Survive Third Grade, Daniel Boone and Second Grade Dog are a few of her other popular and award-winning works. In another literary venture, her talents were challenged when she was asked to modernize in print the classic Little Women, in conjunction with the release of the Columbia motion picture. She is especially proud of Shadow Catcher, The Life and Work of Edward S. Curtis, a biography which won the prestigious Golden Kite Honor Award for Nonfiction in 1995 from the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. In addition to writing, she teaches college level writing courses and conducts writing workshops and presentations in schools throughout the United States.