District
Board of Education
Paramus HS
East Brook
West Brook
Memorial
Midland
Parkway
Ridge Ranch
Stony Lane
About Us Students Faculty & Staff Library Calendar Technology
 
Libary Home
What's Happening
Fun Sites
200 Nights of Reading
Research
Name That Book
Author Visit
Ridge Ranch Home

Author Visit

JOSEPH BRUCHAC IS COMING TO RIDGE RANCH!

MARCH 17, 2011  

 

 

  For over thirty years Joseph Bruchac has been creating poetry, short stories, novels, anthologies and music that reflect his Abenaki Indian heritage and Native American traditions. He is the author of more than 70 books for children and adults. He continues to receive critical acclaim and his books are used in classrooms throughout the country.

BIOGRAPHY

Joseph Bruchac lives with his wife, Carol, in the Adirondack mountain foothills town of Greenfield Center, New York, in the same house where his maternal grandparents raised him. Much of his writing draws on that land and his Abenaki ancestry. Although his American Indian heritage is only one part of an ethnic background that includes Slovak and English blood, those Native roots are the ones by which he has been most nourished. He, his younger sister Margaret, and his two grown sons, James and Jesse, continue to work on projects involving the preservation of Abenaki culture, language and traditional Native skills. He also performs traditional and contemporary Abenaki music with the group Dawnland Singers.

He holds a B.A. from Cornell University, an M.A. in Literature and Creative Writing from Syracuse and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the Union Institute of Ohio. His work as a educator includes eight years of directing a college program for Skidmore College inside a maximum security prison. With his wife, Carol, he is the founder and Co-Director of the Greenfield Review Literary Center and The Greenfield Review Press. His poems and stories have appeared in over 500 publications for children. His honors include a Rockefeller Humanities fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Writing Fellowship for Poetry, the Cherokee Nation Prose Award, the Knickerbocker Award, the Hope S. Dean Award for Notable Achievement in Children's Literature and both the 1998 Writer of the Year Award and the 1998 Storyteller of the Year Award from the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. In 1999, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas.

As a professional teller of the traditional tales of the Adirondacks and the Native peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, Joe Bruchac has performed widely in Europe and throughout the United States from Florida to Hawaii and has been featured at such events as the British Storytelling Festival and the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, Tennessee. He has been a storyteller-in-residence for Native American organizations and schools throughout the continent, including the Institute of Alaska Native Arts and the Onondaga Nation School. He discusses Native culture and his books and does storytelling programs at dozens of elementary and secondary schools each year as a visiting author.



Selected List of Awards
American Book Award for Breaking Silence
Horn Book honor for The Boy Who Lived with the Bears
Scientific American Children’s Book Award for The Story of the Milky Way
Cherokee Nation Prose Award
Hope S. Dean Award for Notable Achievement in Children’s Literature
2005 Virginia Hamilton Literary Award
2001 Parents Guide to Childrens' Media Award for Skeleton Man
2000 Parents Choice Gold Award for Crazy Horse's Vision
1999 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas
1999 Jane Addams Childrens Book Award for Heart of a Chief
1998 Writer of the Year Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas
1998 Storyteller of the Year Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas
1997 Paterson Award for Dog People
1996 Boston Globe Book Award for The Boy Who Lived with the Bears
1995 Knickerbocker Award

 

BOOKS BY JOSEPH BRUCHAC

 

Picture Books

A Boy Called Slow
Between Earth and Sky
Buffalo Song
Crazy Horse's Vision
The Earth Under Sky Bear’s Feet
The First Strawberries
The Great Ball Game
How Chipmunk Got His Stripes
Jim Thorpe's Bright Path
Makiawisug: Gift of the Little People
Many Nations Scholastic
The Maple Thanksgiving
Navajo Long Walk
Raccoon's Last Race
Squanto's Journey
13 Moons on Turtle’s Back
Turtle's Race with Beaver

 


 
 


 

  •  josephbruchac

  •  Ridge Ranch Elementary School     ♦     345 Lockwood Drive, Paramus, NJ 07652      ♦     201-261-7800 x8612