Pringle, Laurence

Like many writers, Laurence says he once mailed manuscripts to magazines and received more rejections than acceptances. But since that time, the Chicago Tribune has called him "one of America's top nonfiction writers for young people," and he has won numerous honors, including the 1999 Washington Post Children's Book Guild Award and the SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books.Educated as a wildlife biologist at Cornell University and the University of Massachusetts, he was hired in 1963 by a children's science magazine published at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. "There, I learned a lot about writing, editing, and picture research," he says. "I learned that my science background and curiosity about the natural world could be put to good use in children's periodicals and books."Laurence is a renowned writer with one hundred books to his credit, mostly nonfiction, including One Room School, Naming the Cat, which Kirkus called "warmly appealing"; and Dog of Discovery: A Newfoundland's Adventure with Lewis and Clark. His most recent releases are Whales! Strange and Wonderful and Bear Hug.Laurence lives in West Nyack, New York.