This week the Nobel Prize winning author Doris Lessing passed away at the age of 94. Her best known work, “Golden Notebook” was described in her obituary as the novel “that made her an icon of the women’s movement.” She was born in present-day Iran, lived in Southern Rhodesia and then moved to London. She was married twice, had three children, and was a member of the Left Book Club, a group of literary communists and socialists. When she received the Nobel Prize she said, “…I couldn’t care less.” She will undoubtedly be remembered for her writing as well as her unconventional life style.
Barbara Park author of the Junie B. Jones books also died this week at the age of 66. Park may not had the literary clout of Lessing, but she was and probably will continue to be a favorite of grade-school children. Starting in 1992, she wrote more than 30 chapter books that feature Junie B. Jones, a “smart-mouthed girl with an ungrammatical opinion of everybody” in her life. We have 33 books in our juvenile collection, and they all have all circulated very well.