11 Facts About Sterling North

Sterling North is best known for the children's novel Rascal, a bestseller in 1963.

Sterling North married David Willard North, the product of a pioneering local family, whose brother ran the family farm.

Sterling North was born on the second floor of a farmhouse on the shores of Lake Koshkonong, a few miles from Edgerton, Wisconsin, in 1906.

When Sterling North was 11, several of his uncles wrote extended biographies about their parents and their pioneer farm life.

In 1940, in his position as Chicago Daily News literary editor, Sterling North was one of the first public figures to denounce the newly popular medium of comic books.

Barely two years after the introduction of Superman, Sterling North wrote that comics were "a poisonous mushroom growth of the last two years" and that comic book publishers were "guilty of a cultural slaughter of the innocents".

One of Sterling North's first books, The Pedro Gorino, published in 1929, was a narrative of the life of Harry Dean, an African-American sea captain.

The house where Sterling North spent his later childhood, the setting for much of Rascal, still stands.

Sterling North's grandfather died in 1913, and his mother died of pneumonia the same year.

Sterling North left the house in 1925 when he graduated from high school.

Sterling North died in Whippany, New Jersey, on December 21,1974, at the age of 68.