Anne Pellowski is an author, an educator, a librarian, and a storyteller, for which she has won numerous honors and awards. Ms. Pellowski is the author of the Wisdom Tales book Story of the Mongolian Tent House, which was illustrated by Beatriz Vidal.
The following four paragraphs are largely taken from
Anne Pellowski’s Wikipedia page:
Anna Rose Pellowski, Polish American educator and author, was born June 28, 1933 on the family farm in the Trempealeau County town of Arcadia, Wisconsin, daughter of Alexander and Anna (Dorawa) Pellowski, both of whom were descended from Kashubian immigrants. (Kashubia is an area in north-central Poland.) She was educated at Sacred Heart School in Pine Creek, Wisconsin; Cotter High School; and College of Saint Teresa in Winona, where she received her Bachelor of Arts in 1955. Upon graduation from Saint Teresa’s, she studied at Munich University, in Germany, and the International Youth Library also in Munich on a Fulbright Program grant. In 1959 she earned a Master of Arts in Library Science, with honors, from Columbia University in New York City.
Ms. Pellowski has written many works on the theory and practice of storytelling, ranging from popular children’s handbooks to scholarly academic articles. These include The World of Children’s Literature (1968) The World of Storytelling (1977, revised edition 1991), The Story Vine: A Source Book of Unusual and Easy-to-Tell Stories from around the World (1984), The Family Storytelling Handbook: How to Use Stories, Anecdotes, Rhymes, Handkerchiefs, Paper, and Other Objects to Enrich Your Family Traditions (with Lynn Sweat, 1987) and The Storytelling Handbook: A Young People’s Collection of Unusual Tales and Helpful Hints on How to Tell Them (1995).
Anne Pellowski has contributed much to children’s literature: There is the “Latsch Valley Series” or “Polish American Girls Series.” These are five novels about life in the Kashubian Polish farm communities in Trempealeau County, Wisconsin. Each of the novels, Willow Wind Farm: Betsy’s Story (1981), Stairstep Farm: Anna Rose’s Story (1981), Winding Valley Farm: Annie’s Story (1982), First Farm in the Valley: Anna’s Story (1982), and Betsy’s Up-and-Down Year (1998), treats one year in the life of a girl from four successive generations of Anne’s own Pellowski family. In Stairstep Farm, five-year-old Anne is herself the protagonist of the story. The novels were first and foremost intended as children’s literature, and have been widely acclaimed for their success. However, the painstaking research and the abundant detail evident throughout all five novels marks them also as valuable historical-cultural documents in which, as Thomas J. Napierkalski observes,“Anne Pellowski has given Polish Americans a voice.” In addition, Pellowski’s novels are noted for moving“beyond the confines of Polishness through interethnic marriage and, more important, by showing the younger generation’s acquisition of a global perspective.” |