Obituary: Esther Hautzig

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-- Publishers Weekly, 11/5/2009 12:20:00 PM

Author Esther Hautzig died on Sunday, November 1, at the age of 79. She was best known for her 1968 work, The Endless Steppe: Growing Up in Siberia, an autobiographical account of her family’s life in Siberia during WWII, having being exiled there from Poland. The book was a National Book Award finalist, a Boston Globe–Horn Book Award Honor Book, an ALA Notable Book, and won the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award and the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, among other accolades.

After Hautzig emigrated to the U.S., she married Walter Hautzig, who survives her along with their two children. She worked for the Children’s Book Council as well as the Thomas Y. Crowell Company. She wrote several other books for children over a career that spanned five decades, including Let’s Cook Without Cooking (Crowell, 1955), A Gift for Mama (Viking, 1981), and A Picture of Grandmother (FSG, 2002).

See the New York Times and School Library Journal for extensive obituaries of Hautzig.