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| When is your birthday?
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| June 26. I was born in 1915. That makes me a very old lady!
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Here's how to say Charlotte's last name |
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Zoll-a-TOW (last syllable emphasized, as in
"towel") is the way CZ usually pronounces it. Zoll-o-toe is also
okay, and more the way my late father used to pronounce it.
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There
really is no right way to say it. It is an Americanized version
of the Russian name "Zolotov", ending in a V rather than a W.
However, the emphasis is always on the last syllable in Russian. The
name means "gold" in Russian, and it is the last name of my late
former husband, Maurice, whose parents, like my
grandparents, came from
Russia (Click to see pictures of them in our
Family Album).
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| My last
name before I married Maurice was Shapiro. I did have a middle name, but
I have never, ever used it, because I don't like it at all as a middle
name for me: Gertrude. |
| Do you have any brothers or sisters? |
| I
don't have any brothers. I do have one sister, Dorothy, whose nickname is Dot.
We have the same birthday, but she is six years older than I am. You can see
many pictures of us together here, at Charlotte and
her sister Dorothy. She was and is very beautiful, as you will see. |
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Dot was also an editor, of history textbooks,
at Macmillan, for many years. On Page
2 of my biography on this site, you can also see pictures of both of us
editing, in our respective offices.
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Do you have any children? |
 Two
children, a son, Stephen, born in 1945, and a daughter, Ellen, born in
1952. They are both grown-up now. Stephen,
who later named himself Zee, is a poker player and a bridge player and an
investor. He cares very much about animal welfare, reads a lot, and loves going
to the theatre. He divides his time between New York and Las Vegas, and he plays
in games all over the world. (To right, a picture of Stephen and me, taken in
my living room in the mid-1970's) |
  Ellen, who later named herself
Crescent Dragonwagon, is also a writer: a children's book writer like I
am, but also a novelist and cookbook writer and magazine article writer. She
also reads a lot, loves to go on long walks, and is a very, very good cook. She
lives in Putney, Vermont. (Ellen/Crescent
as a small, very wide-awake baby, is pictured right.)
You can see a picture of
us when she was a little
girl, and again when
we were both much
older. |
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I enjoyed reading to
both of them as they grew up!
(Above, a passport picture of the three of us, taken around
1959 or 1960 for a trip to Europe which we never made). |
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You
can see many more pictures of all of us, both when my children were young
(Charlotte, Wife & Mother)
and as grown-ups
(Charlotte's Later Years).
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What are your hobbies? |
| I
spend time in my garden, when I am able to, and on my indoor
plants. I listen to music, mostly classical, and I read a lot,
or I did when my eyesight was better than it is now. Friends and
family come to visit, I listen to the wind, and watch the life
on my street, all the coming and going and big and little
excitements... |
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Sometimes people ask me what I do in my
"spare" time. Not only do I have no spare time, I believe that
in a larger sense no time is "spare", it is limited and precious and
valuable.
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Do you have any pets? |
 Not
now, but when I was little I had a dog named Pudgie, a Boston Bull terrier who
was my closest friend. She would walk me to school every morning and meet me
outside the door of the school to walk home (this was a long time ago, when dogs
could go free). (Pictured on left: two Boston bull terriers; neither of them
Pudgie, but very distant relatives. Photo, courtesy of
Brennan's
Bull Terriers).
Later, when my son was
young, we had a beautiful Weimaraner named Jupiter, who we called Jupie. But when my daughter was born,
Jupie grew so protective of her that he would bite anyone who came into her room
who wasn't family. We had to give him away. |
When my daughter was
a little older, we got a standard black
 French poodle named Cleo, who remained
the family dog for many years. Though she has been dead a long, long time now,
if you go into my closet and touch the floor in the back right corner, you can
feel a spot on the floorboards which is still worn away from Cleo's toe-nails.
That is where Cleo liked best to sleep. (Left: Crescent, then Ellen, about age 11, with Cleo and Charlotte, about age 46,
in the living room of Charlotte's house.) |
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The Poodle Who Barked
at the Wind
grew out of Cleo's life in our family.
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What
is your favorite food? |
| In the summer I like cool things
like cucumbers and watermelon. In the winter I like hot soups and home-baked
apple pies. In all seasons I love crystallized ginger! And I am a big coffee
drinker (in the first picture on this page, with my son, you can see I have a cup in my
hand).
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What
is your favorite color? |
It
used to be blue, or green, or blue and green together. But now
it's blue, and
green, and yellow. And even red, and often purple.
Different colors, like different foods and different anythings,
are my favorites at different times. I think each of us is, in a
way, many different people. By this I mean that we are the same
person, but have so many moods and feelings it's as if we are
many people. Each person or each mood or feeling might have a
different favorite color or anything else. (Note: Charlotte's
book
Mr.
Rabbit and the Lovely Present
explains some of the ways some people --- and a very large
rabbit --- feel about certain colors.) |
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If
you could be any age at all, any place in the world, at any time, where and what
would you be? |
| I've had
favorite minutes, but never a favorite age. Favorites can come at any time and
any place, and then last in memory. Different things are "favorite" at
different times, depending on how you feel, as I said above. I still remember
holding my daughter one night when she was a little girl and couldn't sleep (I
think she had the chicken pox). And we sat by the window in the living room and
watched the snow fall in the middle of the night. She still remembers it, too.
It wasn't something you could or would plan, or that you would think of as
"favorite" --- it just happened. But it was lovely. |
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If
you could be an animal, what animal would you be? |
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I think human beings are animals, so I'd be a human being. There
are all kinds of us! And even one human being can feel many different ways, as I
said when talking about favorite colors just now. |
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Kids'
Questions about Charlotte's Writing and Editing |
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