Judith Merril (born January 21, 1923) – U.S. science fiction writer
Read more about Judith Merril here
Read Matthew Cheney's blog post about Merril's story "Dead Center" here, "the most unjustly neglected SF story of all time"
Richie Havens (born January 21, 1941) U.S. singer / songwriter - Freedom
Read about Richie Havens here
Freedom
Freedom / Freedom
Freedom / Freedom
Freedom / Freedom
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
A long way from my home
Sometimes I feel like I?m almost gone
Sometimes I feel like I?m almost gone
Sometimes I feel like I?m almost gone
A long, long, long, way, way from my home
Clap your hands / Clap your hands
Clap your hands / Clap your hands
Clap your hands / Clap your hands
Clap your hands / Clap your hands
Hey?yeah
I got a telephone in my bosom And I can call him up from my heart I got a telephone in my bosom And I can call him up from my heart
When I need my brother?brother When I need my father... father When I need my mother?mother When I need my sister...sister Hey?yeah
Watch a Youtube video of Richie Havens singing Freedom at the 1969 Woodstock Festival:
Eva Ibbotson (born January 21, 1925) U.K. children's book author - Which Witch? (1979)
Read a 2009 interview with Eva Ibbotson on the WordWenches blog
Eva: I came to England as an 8 year old girl; my parents had been separated for some years and I was a bit uncertain where I belonged. When we came to settle in London it was in the world of refugees and danger, and reading for me, as for so many children in those years, became a way of escape. But the cosmopolitanism of my fellow refugees made a rich tapestry which I used again and again when I began to write.
http://wordwenches.typepad.com/word_wenches/2009/06/meet-eva-ibbotson.html
Read Eva Ibbotson's October 2010 obituary in the U.K. Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/oct/22/children-author-eva-ibbotson-dies-aged-85
She was shortlisted for the Carnegie medal for Which Witch? the story of a wizard looking for a wife. The Secret of Platform 13 features a mysterious platform at King's Cross station that leads to another, magical world. Published in 1994, three years before JK Rowling's Harry Potter set off for Hogwart's from King's Cross's platform 9?, the book's possible influence on Rowling has occasionally been raised, though never by Ibbotson herself.
A self-confessed "happy endings freak", her books always reassured young readers that good would be rewarded and that spoilt brats and greedy grown-ups would get their comeuppance.