Freedman, Russell (1929-2018), was an American author of biographies, histories, and other nonfiction books for children and young adults. Freedman won praise for the factual accuracy of his books and his engaging writing style.
Freedman won the 1988 Newbery Medal for Lincoln: A Photobiography (1987). The medal is awarded annually to the best book for children by an American. Freedman’s biography of President Abraham Lincoln is more realistic and complex than earlier biographies of Lincoln for children. Freedman enhanced the impact of his story by including more than 80 photographs and reproductions of original documents.
Freedman’s other biographies include The Wright Brothers: How They Invented the Airplane (1991), Eleanor Roosevelt: A Life of Discovery (1993), The Life and Death of Crazy Horse (1996), Martha Graham: A Dancer’s Life (1998), Babe Didrikson Zaharias: The Making of a Champion (1999), The Voice that Challenged a Nation: Marian Anderson and the Struggle for Equal Rights (2004), and The Adventures of Marco Polo (2006). Like the Lincoln book, these biographies include extensive original research, often with authentic photographs and artwork that help illuminate the subjects.
Freedman’s first children’s book was Teenagers Who Made History (1961). Until 1985, he specialized in wildlife books. He wrote more than 20 books about animal behavior, beginning with How Animals Learn (1969), written with James E. Morriss, a high-school teacher of life sciences. Freedman then turned to American biographical and historical subjects, such as Indian Chiefs (1987), Kids at Work: Lewis Hine and the Crusade Against Child Labor (1994), Give Me Liberty!: The Story of the Declaration of Independence (2000), In the Days of the Vaqueros: America’s First True Cowboys (2001), Children of the Great Depression (2005), Freedom Walkers: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (2006), Who Was First? Discovering the Americas (2007), Washington at Valley Forge (2008), Lafayette and the American Revolution (2010), and Because They Marched: The People’s Campaign for Voting Rights That Changed America (2014). Freedman also wrote Confucius: The Golden Rule (2002), a biography of the ancient Chinese philosopher; The War to End All Wars: World War I (2010); and We Will Not Be Silent: The White Rose Student Resistance Movement That Defied Adolf Hitler (2016).
Russell Bruce Freedman was born on Oct. 11, 1929, in San Francisco. He received a B.A. degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1951. He was a reporter and editor for the Associated Press from 1953 to 1956 in San Francisco. Freedman moved to New York City and worked as a publicity writer from 1956 to 1960 and as an editor in educational publishing from 1961 to 1965. He then became a full-time writer. In 1998, Freedman received the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award (now called the Children’s Literature Legacy Award), presented to an author or illustrator who has made “a lasting and substantial contribution” to children’s literature. Freedman died on March 16, 2018.
