 |
|
| Kate Banks | |
Kate Banks, "who, despite personal tragedy and debilitating illness, became an award-winning author of children's books and young-adult novels that captured the wonder of youth while also confronting fear and grief," died February 24, the New York Times reported. She was 64. Despite her illness, "which she had suffered for decades, and the lingering trauma from the murder of her father when she was in college," Banks was prolific, having published more than 50 books since the late 1980s.
A Maine native, she drew inspiration for her work from a childhood spent among the woods and rocky beaches of her home state in books like A Gift from the Sea (2001), illustrated by Georg Hallensleben, and That's Papa's Way (2009), illustrated by Lauren Castillo.
"This dialogue with nature has accompanied me through adulthood, and it's an important theme running through many of my books," she said in a 2013 interview. "I think that getting children to explore and engage in their natural habitat can help them to understand their place in the world, not only as residents, but as part of a big, beautiful whole."
Banks and Hallensleben won the picture book award from the Horn Book magazine in 1998 for And If the Moon Could Talk. Two years later, her middle-grade novel Howie Bowles, Secret Agent won the Edgar Award for best juvenile book.
From all appearances, Banks led "a charmed life. When she was in her 30s, she lived in Rome with her Italian-born husband, Pierluigi Mezzomo, a civil engineer and entrepreneur, and their two sons, Peter and Max," the Times wrote. When she was in her 40s, the family moved to the Côte d'Azur in France and renovated of a stately hillside house, Villa Bois Joli (Pretty Wood Villa).
Things were far from perfect, however. "From the outside looking in, Kate's life seemed carefree, romantic, even enviable. But the hard stuff she endured was just below the surface," said her sister, Amy Banks.
Kate Banks's life took a devastating turn during her freshman year at Wellesley College. On April 12, 1979, her father, who was attending a convention in New Orleans, was murdered during an attempted robbery. The shooting left deep emotional scars, but she continued on, receiving a bachelor's degree in history in 1982. She then moved to New York City, earned a master's degree in history from Columbia University and took a job at Knopf Books for Young Readers in 1984. She published her first children's book, Alphabet Soup, four years later.
"Many of my novels for older readers have dealt with death," she once wrote. "And I suppose that represents my attempts to come to terms with love and loss of that magnitude." Her YA novel Dillon Dillon (2002) centers on a boy who learns that the people whom he thought were his parents are actually his aunt and uncle, and that his actual parents died in an accident when he was young.
Banks "managed to maintain a strict daily writing schedule for years, despite a chronic fatigue syndrome diagnosis in her 20s and at times crippling pain from a botched medical procedure for a prolapsed uterus from childbirth," the Times noted. "With the complications of mast cell activation syndrome, including drops in blood pressure, flushing, severe itching and rashes, Ms. Banks relied on countless alternative therapies."
During the Covid-19 pandemic, she found another form of therapy--poetry. Her first anthology, Into the Ether, is scheduled to be published this fall.