Besides being an editor, a teacher, and a storyteller, Gerald Hausman is also the author of many picture books, sixteen of which have won awards. Hausman has written the story for the Wisdom Tales book The Otter, the Spotted Frog & the Great Flood. His friend Ramon Shiloh painted the beautiful pictures for the book. The book has won three Midwest Book Awards (Gold Medal in the category “Illustration: Graphic,” and Silver Medals in the categories “Children’s Picture Books” and “Total Book Design”) and won the 2013 ForeWord Review “Book of the Year” Bronze Medal Award in the category “Picture Books, Early Reader.”

Gerald also co-edited the book The Image Taker: The Selected Stories and Photographs of Edward S. Curtis, which is available through Wisdom Tales.

Gerald spent much of his adult life in New Mexico, where many American Indians still live. During that time he translated Native American creation stories with his Navajo artist friend, Jay DeGroat. After receiving special tribal approval, some of these stories were aired on Navajo Nation radio station KTNN. One of his stories, The Turquoise Horse, was included in the Junior Great Books Anthology Level Five, and was also made into an audio book.  

In The Otter, the Spotted Frog & the Great Flood, which Gerald Hausman wrote and Ramon Shiloh illustrated, everything, even the whole wide world, gets very, very wet!

Gerald Hausman’s bestseller How Chipmunk Got Tiny Feet  has already reached over a million copies in foreign and American editions. Gerald’s native stories have been used on the History Channel, NPR, Pacifica Broadcasting and Christian Science Monitor Radio.  The University of Washington Graduate Film School made an animated short film of his book The Boy with the Sun Tree Bow. During this time Gerald became close friends with artist Ramon Shiloh who was the native arts consultant for the film project. For the next six years they worked together on The Otter, the Spotted Frog & the Great Flood, an ecological prophecy and picture book from the Creek people. The Otter, the Spotted Frog & the Great Flood will be published by Wisdom Tales in 2013.

Gerald Hausman’s picture book Three Little Birds (co-written with Cedella Marley and illustrated by Mariah Fox) has been adapted into a musical for children which has already put on performances in several cities, including New York City.

Praise for Gerald’s anthologies includes The New York Times Book Review for Tunkashila: From the Birth of Turtle Island to the Blood of Wounded Knee which stated, “An eloquent tribute to the first great storytellers of America.” The same review goes on to comment about Hausman’s style like this: “Gerald Hausman’s writing is richly lyrical; his language creates a swirling, lustrous world in which his characters come triumphantly to life.”

Gerald has received awards and honors from the American Folklore Society, the American Bookseller, Children’s Protective Services, Bank Street College of Education, the National Council of Social Studies, the International Reading Association, Parent’s Choice, The Ministry of Education of Jamaica, The New York Public Library, CCBC Choices/Best of the Year and Junior Library Guild.

For more details on his life and work, see Gerald Hausman’s teen author page on Wisdom Tales.

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