Jean Craighead George & CZ

Jean Craighead George, naturalist and novelist and non-fiction writer, is Charlotte's great good friend. They live a few town's away from each other, Jean upriver (the river being the Hudson) from Charlotte in Westchester County, New York. The two get together several times a week whenever Jean is in town (and not on one of her adventures, as she is in the picture  above and to the left, taking on a recent trip to the Arctic, where books like her Julie of the Wolves, cover pictured below right, are set). 

Sometimes Charlotte and Jean go out to dinner together, or on long drives in the country; sometimes they just sit on Charlotte's porch in the late afternoon and, over a glass of vodka, simply talk (as they are doing in the photo to right, taken by Ned Shank, Charlotte's son-in-law). Although they admire each other's work and often talk about the field of children's literature, they are just as likely to talk about family, politics, and their respective lives' adventures and challenges --- like all good friends do. 

About Jean's writing 

Jean's love of the natural world and all the creatures who inhabit it shine in her enrapturing books. Some, like the recently published How to Talk to Your Dog / How to Talk to Your Cat, are for younger children. Others are for older children and teenagers, like My Side of the Mountain, in which a runaway boy spends a gloriously self-sufficient year in a self-made home in a hollow tree, with a self-trained falcon, Frightful, for company. In the Newbery Award-winning Julie of the Wolves (cover pictured right and above) ,  the protagonist, an Eskimo girl, survives a winter on Jean's beloved Arctic tundra by becoming part of a wolf pack. The book is in motion picture development. Jean herself is a great lover and observer of wolves. She often goes on wolf-watching treks, sometimes with her friend (and Charlotte's, the writer/actor Barbara Dana ). 

Jean is pictured below with a collage of her book covers, as well as her beloved dog. To learn more about Jean Craighead George, her writing, and her life, please visit http://www.jeancraigheadgeorge.com  . 

Jean on Charlotte Zolotow, the children's poet

" There are many poets who write for children, but there is only one who reaches into their world and understands their young developing emotions --- Charlotte Zolotow. She sings out beautiful words to them as she recognizes their jealousies, loves, ambitions, frustrations, and joys. Her books seek out the child in the child. Reader and writer go tripping off together into a special world, right under their parents' eyes. "

Jean on CZ, her friend

"Even better than that, if possible, Charlotte is great company for folks from 2 to 95 and 95 to 2. Beyond those extremities I have not seen her interacting, but will change the numbers when I do. "

To discover other writers who know and love Charlotte, please go to Books CZ Has Edited. Or meet her other Friends & Colleagues .