Bio:

THE SECRET WORLD OF WALTER ANDERSON won the 2010 Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children given by the NCTE, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the 2010 SIBA Book Award for Children's/YA given by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance.
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I grew up in Georgia reading Beatrix Potter and dressing up my cats. After graduating from Simmons College in Boston, I was a radio announcer and a singer in a rock 'n' roll band. Then in Manhattan, I studied Shakespearian acting and surprised Andy Warhol, among others, with singing telegrams.

A huge fan of game shows, I appeared on "$50,000 Pyramid" with Dick Clark and after a six-figure win on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" with Meredith Vieira, I got serious about writing for children.

My first book, SO MANY HOUSES, illustrated by Alik Arzoumanian (Scholastic Library Publishing, 2006) was the direct result of a contact made at an SCBWI-Southern Breeze conference in Atlanta.

My most recent book - THE SECRET WORLD OF WALTER ANDERSON, illustrated by E.B. Lewis and published by Candlewick Press in September 2009 - was contracted after I received encouragement from a Newbery winner I met at the SCBWI Summer Conference in Los Angeles in 2006. SCBWI rocks!

THE SECRET WORLD OF WALTER ANDERSON, inspired by my years on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in Ocean Springs, is about an artist who rowed twelve miles of open water to live under his boat on an uninhabited barrier island so he could paint the wildlife there.

In addition to the Orbis Pictus Award and the SIBA Book Award, THE SECRET WORLD OF WALTER ANDERSON received a starred review in Kirkus; was named an NCSS Notable Social Studies Book for Young People; a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus, Bank Street, and CCBC Choices; was a bestseller at Southern Independent Bookstores; and represented Alabama in 2012 and Mississippi in 2009 at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C.

My next book due from Candlewick Press in January 2015 is SEEDS OF FREEDOM, about the civil rights era in Huntsville, Alabama. After ten years living there, I now I live in New Mexico and appear at schools, libraries, and conferences nationwide to encourage everyone to read, write, follow their dreams, and keep an eye out for serendipity.


Writer
PAL
Member since 2001
Region: New Mexico

Contact Information

Website:  http://www.hesterbass.com

Published In Children's Market: Yes
Available for Speaking Engagements? Yes