Award-winning author visits Pendleton 4th grade students

By on Wednesday, February 19th, 2025 in Columbia Basin News More Top Stories

PENDLETON(News release from the city of Pendleton) The Pendleton Public Library will welcome award-winning author Deborah Hopkinson to Pendleton this week.

Hopkinson is the award-winning author of more than 70 books for young readers including picture books, historical fiction, and nonfiction. Deborah’s nonfiction includes Titanic, Voices from the Disaster, which received a YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction honor and a Robert F. Sibert Honor, Courage & Defiance, Stories of Spies, Saboteurs, and Survivors in WWII Denmark, winner of the OCTE Oregon Spirit Award, and Shutting out the Sky, Life in the Tenements of New York 1880-1924, which received an NCTE Orbis Pictus honor.

“The library is excited to bring children’s author Deborah Hopkinson into each of Pendleton’s 4th grade classrooms,” Library Director Jennifer Johnson said. “This is an opportunity for kids to see firsthand that telling stories can be a career path. We hope she will inspire them to tell their own stories and light a fire in our youth for creative writing.”

Hopkinson will visit Pendleton elementary schools and work with fourth-grade students about her book Apples to Oregon.

A native of Massachusetts, Deborah received a B.A. in English from the University of Massachusetts and an M.A. in Asian Studies from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. For many years she worked in academic fundraising for institutions including Whitman College and Oregon State University. She lives with her family and many pets near Portland and has two grown children and one grandson.

This presentation is sponsored by the Friends of the Library through a generous bequest left by Gayle E. Blek, which stipulated funds should be used for reading related programs and activities serving teens and children.

Photo of Hopkinson via city of Pendleton