Lewis Carroll: Birthday: 27^th January 1832

Facts

• Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.
• The author is best known for Alice in Wonderland.
• Carroll had his productivity worked out to a science: he could write 20 words a minute, a page of 150 words in seven and a half minutes, and twelve pages in two and a half hours.
• He was a big letter writer, sometimes corresponding upwards of 2,000 times in one year, and he would sometimes write backwards, forcing the reader to hold the letter to a mirror in order to decipher it.
• The Cheshire cat is a character in Alice in Wonderland, a mischievous grinning cat with the ability to disappear into thin air! The character was inspired by cheese moulds from the county of Cheshire in England, a dairy-rich area where “grinning like a Cheshire cat” was a popular phrase – possibly because cats were happy to live in a land of abundant dairy farms! Cheesemakers in the area moulded their cheese with the design of a cat’s grinning face on the front, and sliced from the back, so that the cat would slowly disappear as the cheese was eaten.

Quotes

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

“Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle.”

“I can’t go back to yesterday – because I was a different person then.”

“Have I gone mad? I’m afraid so, but let me tell you something, the best people usually are.”

“Everything is funny, if you can laugh at it.”

Eva Ibbotson: Birthday: 21^st January 1925

Facts

• Eva Ibbotson is the award-winning author of many books for children and adults.
• She has a daughter and three sons, who showed her that children like to read about ghosts, wizards, and witches “because they are just like people but madder and more interesting”.
• Her first children’s book, The Great Ghost Rescue, was published in 1975, and she is best known for titles like Journey to the River Sea and The Dragonfly Pool.

Quotes

“It’s true that adventures are good for people even when they are very young. Adventures can get in a person’s blood even if he doesn’t remember having them.” 

“When you’re sad, my Little Star, go out of doors. It’s always better underneath the open sky.” 

“You cannot stop the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can stop them nesting in your hair.” 

Lucy Maud Montgomery: Birthday: 30^th November 1874

Facts

• Lucy Maud Montgomery is best known for her her first novel, Anne of Green Gables, written in 1905.
• The book was rejected by every publisher Montgomery sent it to, so she stored it away in a hat box – but when it finally found a publisher, it ended up selling 19,000 copies in its first five months.
• Montgomery’s other bestsellers include Emily of New Moon, Jane of Lantern Hill, Pat of Silver Bush, The Blue Castle and The Story Girl.
•  Growing up, Montgomery had two imaginary friends who lived in a “fairy room” behind a bookcase in her grandparents’ sitting room. Maud saw her reflection in the bookcase’s glass doors and named the left reflection Katie Maurice and the right Lucy Gray.
• As a child, Montgomery was teased by a friend of her grandfather, who called her “Johnny”. It infuriated her and instilled a lifelong lesson: never tease a child.
• Montgomery grew up with a deep love for nature. When she was nine, Montgomery wrote a poem about her favourite tree, a birch that she referred to as “The Monarch of the Forest”. The poem began like this: “Around the poplar and the spruce, The fir and maple stood; But the old tree that I loved best, Grew in the Haunted wood.”

Quotes

“Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it.”

“Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing.”

“It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.”

“We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.”