Jane Kurtz was born on April 17,1952 and is an American writer of more than thirty picture books, middle-grade novels, nonfiction, ready-to-reads, and books for educators.
21 Facts About Jane Kurtz
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Jane Kurtz was part of a small group of volunteers who organized the not-for-profit organization, Ethiopia Reads, which has established more than seventy libraries for children, published books, and built four schools in rural Ethiopia.
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Jane Kurtz was born in Portland, Oregon, to missionary parents, who moved the family to Ethiopia when she was two years old.
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Maji, at 8000 feet altitude, was where Jane first learned to read as Polly Kurtz homeschooled Kurtz and her sisters.
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The family spent one year in Boise, Idaho when Jane Kurtz was in second grade.
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Jane Kurtz would remain at Good Shepherd through her junior year of high school, except for spending her eighth-grade year in Pasadena, California.
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Jane Kurtz spent about six months in a body cast before beginning her work life.
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Jane Kurtz served as the director of a not-for-profit organization, Trinidad Downtown Area Development, and was a member of the Colorado Council on the Arts before moving to Grand Forks, North Dakota, where she completed her master's degree in English and taught as a senior lecturer in the English department.
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Years spent reading and discussing books and writing with young people encouraged Jane Kurtz to try to publish her own stories.
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Jane Kurtz's first middle-grade novel, The Storyteller's Beads, is an attempt to show what life was like in Ethiopia during the time of "red terror" after her family moved back to the United States.
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Jane Kurtz's goal was to evoke the realities of children encountering conflict and the danger of war.
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Jane Kurtz has written that she was moved to begin drafting the story after reading eyewitness accounts of some of those who made the journey.
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Jane Kurtz has written picture books about the beauty of Ethiopia, including Water Hole Waiting, co-authored by her brother Christopher Kurtz.
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In 1997, Jane Kurtz returned to Ethiopia after having been away for twenty years.
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Jane Kurtz drew on her flood memories for tornado scenes in her 2013 novel Anna Was Here.
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Jane Kurtz has been invited to speak in forty states of the United States and in various countries in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
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Jane Kurtz's presentations are often praised for their wittiness, their ability to connect with young writers, and their emphasis on the life-changing power of reading.
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Jane Kurtz was invited to be part of "Laura Bush Celebrates America's Authors," a day of literacy celebration prior to US President George W Bush's 2001 inauguration, during which fourteen children's book authors were honored and then conducted presentations in Washington DC schools.
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In 2011, Jane Kurtz returned to the Pasir Ridge International School to show the students the book that had been partially inspired by them.
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Jane Kurtz wrote the books Lanie and Lanie's Real Adventures while she was living in Lawrence, Kansas, where her son and daughter-in-law were attending college at the University of Kansas.
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Jane Kurtz decided to create a character who engages in citizen science to help save monarch butterflies after reading about Monarch Watch, a cooperative network of students, teachers, volunteers and researchers based in Lawrence.