MacLeod, Elizabeth

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MacLEOD, Elizabeth

PERSONAL:

Born October 21, in Thornhill, Ontario, Canada; married Paul Wilson.

ADDRESSES:

Home—22 Tullis Dr., Toronto, Ontario M4S 2E2, Canada. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Author and editor of children's books. Owl magazine, editor; writer for a software company; freelance editor for publishers, including Kids Can Press.

MEMBER:

Canadian Society of Children's Authors, Illustrators, and Performers.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Silver Birch Award shortlist, for The Phone Book: Instant Communication from Smoke Signals to Satellites and Beyond and Lucy Maud Montgomery: A Writer's Life; Hackmatack Award shortlist, for Get Started: Stamp Collecting for Canadian Kids; Hackmatack Award shortlist, Red Cedar Book Award shortlist, Silver Birch Award shortlist, and Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People selection, Children's Book Council, all for Alexander Graham Bell: An Inventive Life; writing awards from Association of Educational Publishers.

WRITINGS:

Lions, Grolier (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1988.

Koalas, Grolier (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1989.

Puffins, Grolier (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1990.

Australia, Grolier (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1990.

(Editor) The Puzzlers Book, illustrated by Gary Clement, Greey de Pencier Books (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1991.

The Recycling Book, Greey de Pencier Books (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1991.

Dinosaurs: The Fastest, the Fiercest, the Most Amazing, illustrated by Gordon Sauvé, Kids Can Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1994, Viking (New York, NY) 1995.

The Phone Book: Instant Communication from Smoke Signals to Satellites and Beyond, illustrated by Bill Slavin, Kids Can Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1995.

Get Started: Stamp Collecting for Canadian Kids, Kids Can Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1996.

I Heard a Little Baa, illustrated by Louise Phillips, Kids Can Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1998.

Bake It and Build It, illustrated by Tracy Walker, Kids Can Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1998.

Grow It Again, illustrated by Caroline Price, Kids Can Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1999.

Bake and Make Amazing Cakes, illustrated by June Bradford, Kids Can Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2001.

(With Laurie Skreslet) To the Top of Everest, Kids Can Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2001.

Gifts to Make and Eat, illustrated by June Bradford, Kids Can Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2001.

What Did Dinosaurs Eat? and Other Things You Want to Know about Dinosaurs, Kids Can Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2001.

The Kids Book of Great Canadians, illustrated by John Mantha, Kids Can Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2004.

Bake and Make Amazing Cookies, illustrated by June Bradford, Kids Can Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2004.

Chock Full of Chocolate, illustrated by June Bradford, Kids Can Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2005.

Contributor to educational anthologies.

"SNAPSHOTS: IMAGES OF PEOPLE AND PLACES IN HISTORY" SERIES

Alexander Graham Bell: An Inventive Life, Kids Can Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1999.

Lucy Maud Montgomery: A Writer's Life, Kids Can Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2001.

The Wright Brothers: A Flying Start, Kids Can Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2002.

Albert Einstein: A Life of Genius, Kids Can Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2003.

Helen Keller: A Determined Life, Kids Can Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2004.

Marie Curie: A Brilliant Life, Kids Can Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2004.

Harry Houdini: A Magical Life, Kids Can Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

Elizabeth MacLeod is an author and editor of children's books. A native of Canada, she has written craft books, works of nonfiction, and picture books for young readers. MacLeod has also penned a number of critically acclaimed biographies, including Alexander Graham Bell: An Inventive Life and Lucy Maud Montgomery: A Writer's Life.

One of MacLeod's first efforts, Dinosaurs: The Fastest, the Fiercest, the Most Amazing, appeared in 1994. In the work, she offers information on more than twenty species of the prehistoric creatures. According to a Resource Links contributor, the book will "whet the appetite of any fledgling dinosaur lover." A more recent volume, titled What Did Dinosaurs Eat? and Other Things You Want to Know about Dinosaurs, examines the size and weight, feeding habits, life span, intelligence, and personalities of several types of dinosaurs. A critic in Kirkus Reviews praised MacLeod's "vivid writing."

Grow It Again, Bake and Make Amazing Cakes, and Bake and Make Amazing Cookies are among the craft books published by MacLeod. Deemed "a promising source of worthwhile, inexpensive projects" by Booklist critic Carolyn Phelan, Grow It Again gives instructions for growing plants from such things as pineapple tops and potato buds. Bake and Make Amazing Cakes provides directions for a variety of theme cakes, including creations shaped like a butterfly, a house, and a rainbow. School Library Journal reviewer Carolyn Jenks remarked that the volume is "just the book for playful bakers." A companion work, Bake and Make Amazing Cookies, was described as a "dandy choice for beginning cooks" by Karen McKinnon in Resource Links.

The 1999 biography Alexander Graham Bell looks at the inventor of the telephone. MacLeod discusses several little-known aspects of Bell's life, including his experiments with flight and his fascination with the Mohawk Indian tribe. Booklist critic Carolyn Phelan noted that "the text reads well, and the extended captions offer interesting facts." The author of the celebrated children's book Anne of Green Gables is the subject of MacLeod's 2001 biography Lucy Maud Montgomery. Readers will learn that Montgomery "had much in common with her fictitious heroine," observed a reviewer in Publishers Weekly.

MacLeod continues her series of biographical works with The Wright Brothers: A Flying Start, published in 2002. Using archival photographs and reproductions of historical documents, she presents an introduction to the men who made the first controlled, sustained flight. School Library Journal contributor Barbara Buckley stated that few books on the Wright Brothers "can rival this one for clarity of text and variety of illustration." Albert Einstein: A Life of Genius surveys the life of the great physicist, touching on his early career as an assistant in a Swiss patent office, his landmark scientific discoveries, and his efforts for international peace following World War II. "The lively mix of text, sidebars, photographs, newspaper excerpts, equations, and Einstein's handwritten notes adds up to a format inviting browsing and offering much information to closer readers," wrote a critic in Kirkus Reviews.

MacLeod profiles two famous women in Helen Keller: A Determined Life and Marie Curie: A Brilliant Life, both published in 2004. In her work about Keller, "America's First Lady of Courage," MacLeod includes both familiar and little-known events from her subject's life, "smoothly integrated to reveal the struggle, the sadness, and the success Keller experienced over the years," observed Booklist reviewer Stephanie Zvirin. In Marie Curie MacLeod focuses on the Nobel Prize winner who discovered the elements polonium and radium. Carolyn Cutt, writing in Resource Links, dubbed MacLeod's biography of one of the world's most noted female scientists "excellent and informative."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Appleseeds, December, 2002, Sheila Wilensky, review of The Wright Brothers: A Flying Start, p. 29.

Booklist, December 1, 1998, Shelley Townsend-Hudson, review of Bake It and Build It, p. 665; June 1, 1999, Carolyn Phelan, review of Grow It Again, p. 1820; April 1, 2001, Carolyn Phelan, review of Lucy Maud Montgomery: A Writer's Life, p. 1462; September 15, 2001, Roger Leslie, review of To the Top of Everest, p. 215; November 1, 2001, Stephanie Zvirin, review of Gifts to Make and Eat, pp. 472-473; April 1, 2002, Carolyn Phelan, review of The Wright Brothers, p. 1338; March 1, 2003, Ilene Cooper, review of Albert Einstein: A Life of Genius, p. 1195; March 1, 2004, Stephanie Zvirin, review of Helen Keller: A Determined Life, pp. 1204-1205.

Children's Digest, July, 2000, review of Alexander Graham Bell: An Inventive Life, p. 28.

Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2001, review of What Did Dinosaurs Eat? and Other Things You Want to Know about Dinosaurs, p. 1296; February 15, 2003, review of Albert Einstein, p. 311; August 1, 2004, review of Marie Curie: A Brilliant Life, p. 744.

Publishers Weekly, September 21, 1998, review of I Heard a Little Baa, p. 83; February 26, 2001, review of Lucy Maud Montgomery, p. 88.

Resource Links, June, 1998, review of Dinosaurs: The Fastest, the Fiercest, the Most Amazing, pp. 10-11; October, 1998, review of I Heard a Little Baa, p. 4; April, 1999, review of Bake It and Build It, p. 17; April, 2001, Victoria Pennell, review of Lucy Maud Montgomery, p. 18; June, 2001, Shannon Danylko, review of Bake and Make Amazing Cakes, p. 19; October, 2001, Shannon Danylko, review of What Did Dinosaurs Eat?, p. 27; April, 2002, Victoria Pennell, review of The Wright Brothers, pp. 36-37; April, 2003, Karen McKinnon, review of Albert Einstein, pp. 26-27; April, 2004, Laura Reilly, review of Helen Keller, p. 31, and Victoria Pennell, review of The Kids Book of Great Canadians, pp. 31-32; October, 2004, Karen McKinnon, review of Bake and Make Amazing Cookies, pp. 25-26; December, 2004, Carolyn Cutt, review of Madame Curie, p. 28.

School Library Journal, April, 2001, Kathleen Simonetta, review of Lucy Maud Montgomery, p. 164; June, 2001, Carolyn Jenks, review of Bake and Make Amazing Cakes, p. 139; September, 2001, Be Astengo, review of To the Top of Everest, p. 254; November, 2001, Patricia Manning, review of What Did Dinosaurs Eat?, p. 147; February, 2002, Augusta R. Malvagno, review of Gifts to Make and Eat, pp. 147-148; July, 2002, Barbara Buckley, review of The Wright Brothers, p. 138; May, 2003, Anne Chapman Callaghan, review of Albert Einstein, p. 174; May, 2004, Donna Cardon, review of Helen Keller, p. 134; November, 2004, Susan Lissim, review of Marie Curie, p. 169.