Creator of Paddington Bear, Michael Bond, Dies at 91

The writer who created the beloved children's character Paddington Bear has died.

Michael Bond was 91. His publisher said he died Tuesday after a brief illness.

There are few children who do not recognize and love Paddington and his trademark rain hat and coat and suitcase.

Bond created Paddington in 1956 after spotting a teddy bear sitting alone in a London shop.

In his first adventure, “A Bear Called Paddington,” the character was described as a stowaway from “darkest Peru” who showed up at London's Paddington train station wearing a sign saying “Please look after this bear. Thank you.”

Since his debut, Paddington has sold more than 35 million books in 40 languages, starred in movies and on television.

Shooting on a new Paddington film wrapped up this week.

Bond once said children are drawn to Paddington because of his “vulnerability.”

Phyllis Schlafly 'First Lady of US Anti-Feminism' Dies

Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative activist who almost single-handedly helped defeat the proposed Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s and pushed the Republican Party to the right in ensuing decades, has died. She was 92.

Schlafly died Monday of cancer at her home in St. Louis, her son John Schlafly said.

Known as "the first lady of anti-feminism," Schlafly rose to national attention in 1964 with her self-published book, “A Choice Not an Echo,” that became a manifesto for the far right. The book, which sold 3 million copies, chronicled the history of the Republican National Convention and is credited with helping conservative Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona win the 1964 GOP nomination.

She later helped lead opposition to the ERA, a proposed constitutional amendment that would guarantee equal rights under the law regardless of gender. Schlafly argued that the measure would mean the end of the traditional family.

Supporters of the measure argued it would require that laws determining child support and job opportunities be designed without regard to gender.

Schlafly told the Associated Press in 2007 that perhaps her greatest legacy was the Eagle Forum, which she founded in 1972. The ultraconservative group has chapters in several states and claims 80,000 members. "I've taught literally millions of people how to participate in self-government,'' Schlafly said.

The Eagle Forum pushes for low taxes, a strong military and English-only education. The group is against efforts it says are pushed by radical feminists or encroach on U.S. sovereignty, such as guest worker visas. The group's website describes the Equal Rights Amendment as having had a "hidden agenda of tax-funded abortions and same-sex marriages.''

Saint Louis University history professor Donald Critchlow, who profiled Schlafly in his 2005 book, “Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman's Crusade,” said the defeat of the amendment helped revive conservatism and pave the way for Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980.

Schlafly remained active in conservative politics well into her 80s, when she was still writing a column that appeared in 100 newspapers, doing radio commentaries on more than 460 stations, and publishing a monthly newsletter.

Photo by Gage Skidmore: Phyllis Schlafly speaking at CPAC in Washington D.C. on 12 February 2011.

US Author Pat Conroy Dies

Author Pat Conroy, who chronicled both the beauty and the pain of growing up in the American South, has died at age 70 after a bout with pancreatic cancer.

Conroy's publisher announced the news late Friday, saying the author known for his lyrical prose died at home in Beaufort, South Carolina, surrounded by friends and family.

Conroy's novels often described troubled family relationships juxtaposed with descriptions of the natural beauty of coastal South Carolina - an area known for hospitality and gracious living, but also a dark history of slavery and racism.

Four of Conroy's novels were made into movies, the best-known of which are The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini.

'To Kill a Mockingbird' Author Harper Lee Dies

Harper Lee, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird, one of the most significant works in the history of American literature, died Friday at age 89 in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama.

Lee's attorney, Tonja Carter, said she "passed away early this morning in her sleep" and that the death was unexpected.

Her publisher, HarperCollins, also confirmed her death Friday but did not give any other details.

"The world knows Harper Lee was a brilliant writer, but what many don't know is that she was an extraordinary woman of great joyfulness, humility and kindness," said Michael Morrison, head of Lee's publisher HarperCollins. "She lived her life the way she wanted to — in private, surrounded by books and the people who loved her.''

To Kill a Mockingbird tells the story of idealistic white southern lawyer Atticus Finch, who defends an African-American man unjustly accused of raping a white woman.

The story is set in the Great Depression of the 1930s and is seen through the eyes of Finch's young daughter, Scout. It is as much a story of growing up as it is a tale of racism and injustice.

It was a remarkable novel for its time, published in 1960 when black Americans were battling for civil rights and confronted by violent mobs, indifferent police, and racist white politicians.

'Changed America'

To Kill a Mockingbird won a Pulitzer Prize for literature and was made into a 1962 film starring Gregory Peck, who won an Oscar playing Finch.

The book has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide, HarperCollins says, making it one of the most widely read books since it was published.

In a 1991 Library of Congress survey of books that have affected people's live, To Kill a Mockingbird was ranked second only to the Bible.

A stage version of the book will make its Broadway debut next year.

President and first lady Barack and Michelle Obama said Friday that Lee "changed America for the better" and that her book also changed the way Americans see each other more powerfully than 100 speeches could.

But Lee herself avoided the spotlight. She said she never expected Mockingbird to become a success, and she lived quietly in New York and Monroeville.

Her public appearances were few. But she did go to the White House in 2007 — to accept a Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush, who called her book "a gift to the entire world."

She also regularly attended an annual luncheon at the University of Alabama to meet with the winners of a high school essay contest on the subject of her book, and wrote occasional articles for U.S. magazines.

'Legacy will last'

Spencer Madrie, owner of Monroeville's Ol' Curiosities & Book Shoppe, which is dedicated to the work of Lee and other Southern authors, said the town was in a somber mood as word of Lee's death spread.

"You wish somebody like that could go on forever and be this lifelong legend," Madrie said. "You don't ever consider somebody like that passing, even though her legacy will last for generations after."

A private funeral will be held in a few days, a statement from Lee's family said.

The book world was stunned last year when Lee allowed HarperCollins to publish her only other known novel, Go Set A Watchman, which was a prequel to Mockingbird.

The publisher says it was the fastest-selling book in its history, selling more than 1.1 million copies in North America in its first week.

New York City’s Harlem Mourns, Cherishes Maya Angelou

by Adam Phillips

Poet, author and human rights activist Maya Angelou, who died Wednesday at the age of 86, was considered by many a literary giant.  But to residents of Harlem, a largely African American New York neighborhood where she sometimes lived, the author of “Why The Caged Bird Sings” and other works is especially mourned. 

While Maya Angelou received dozens of awards and honorary degrees, she came from the humblest of beginnings in the racially segregated South - having worked as a streetcar conductor, fry cook and calypso performer among other jobs during her youth.  

On a city bus riding through Harlem, Rayna Clay-Cuffee remembered Angelou from a half century ago, when they were both nightclub singers. 

"And then the years went by, and then I was there when she spoke at the inauguration for [President] Clinton," she said. "So she’s been around a long time.  She’s a wonderful woman, extremely intelligent, and she used her intelligence for the world."

Joanathan, who also was riding the bus, admired Angelou for her wisdom and compassion.  He said that while her writing often expressed the challenges she and other African Americans faced in their struggle for equality, she felt an underlying bond to all peoples.

“And they can coexist in one.  People always make the mistake of saying ‘that race did that’ or ‘that one ain’t no good.’  But we are one human race. And that’s what she understood," said Joanathan.

On 125th Street, Harlem’s busy main thoroughfare, “Lord Harrison,” a hip hop artist, sold his CDs to passersby.  He credited Maya Angelou’s poetry and public acclaim with helping to pioneer his musical genre.

“She paved the way!  Without her doing her thing and opening the way and ‘bustin’ with the moves,’ as we like to say, hip hop wouldn’t be invented.  It wouldn’t have happened.  She did it!  She is a true American icon," he said.

Nearby, the marquee of the famed Apollo Theater, where the Jackson Five, James Brown, Aretha Franklin and other stars played, noted in big black letters Maya Angelou's passing.

In-house historian Billy Mitchell, who has worked there for 49 years, remembers meeting her.    

“What a regal lady she was!  Very graceful.  That beautiful smile.  ‘How are you, young man?’  I could have melted right there," he said. "Because I meet so many people here and there are just a few that really make me feel a little strange and giddy and groupie-like.  And she was one of those people that did that for me, absolutely. "We all adored Maya.  Her words made us feel proud. She understood our struggle. She understood what it was like to be poor and to be hungry and she made something of herself.  Young kids are still reciting her poetry: ‘and still I rise.  I rise.  I rise.'"

Plans for Maya Angelou’s funeral have not been released.

Legendary White House Reporter Helen Thomas Dead at 92

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas, who covered American presidents for nearly 50 years, has died at the age of 92.

Friends and colleagues say she died early Saturday at her home in Washington.

Thomas was a pioneer for women in journalism at a time when men dominated the profession. She covered every U.S. commander-in-chief since President John F. Kennedy.

She was known to often express strong views on sensitive issues even when questioning a president during nationally broadcast news conferences.

In 2010 Thomas was recorded on video saying that Israel should get out of Palestine. She later apologized but ended her White House career after the video led to widespread condemnation.

Helen Thomas worked for the United Press International wire service and Hearst newspapers. She ended dozens of presidential news conferences with the familiar phrase "Thank you, Mr. President."

Science Fiction Icon Ray Bradbury Dead at 91

Ray Bradbury, one of America's best-known science fiction writers, has died at the age of 91.

Bradbury is perhaps most remembered for his 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451, about a futuristic society where book burning is an official policy. Often described as a story about the evils of censorship, Bradbury said the book was really about television destroying people's interest in literature.

Bradbury first catapulted to international fame years earlier, in 1950, when he published The Martian Chronicles, a collection of stories about human attempts to colonize Mars. It book was eventually published in more than 30 languages.

Bradbury was a rarity in the literary world — a science fiction writer who managed to win acclaim from critics for the quality of his writing and story-telling. But Bradbury's works were often about much more than fantastic visions of the future. He used the The Martian Chronicles' stories to express stinging criticism of current events, addressing controversial topics like racism, pollution, nuclear war and technology gone out of control.

In all, Bradbury wrote more than 30 books and nearly 600 short stories across his decades-long career, as well as poems, plays and screenplays.

President Barack Obama said Bradbury's gift for storytelling reshaped the culture and will inspire generations to come.

Bradbury's love for writing, and for writing about the future, came from his childhood.

Born on August 22, 1920 in in Waukegan, Illinois, his father moved the family to Los Angeles when Bradbury was young. He told CBS television in 1988 his family never had much money, but that at a young age he fell in love with the science fiction comic strip, Buck Rogers.

“All the kids at school made fun of me, I tore them up. A month later, I broke into tears and I said to myself, 'Who died?' The answer was 'Me.' I listened to those fools, they made fun of my love. I went back and collected the Buck Rogers comic strips and discovered [that] that was the way to live.”

Bradbury said that philosophy stuck with him the rest of his life.

“I've learned long ago that everyone else was wrong and I was right. If you learn that when you're 9, 10 or 11, and keep that with you for a lifetime, you'll have a good life.”

He also sought inspiration from his toys and mementos he had collected over the years and refused to throw away. They found a home in the basement of his Los Angeles home, which also served as his writing studio.

“You never know where you're going to get an idea, and really these are metaphors as I look around at them, and one by one, I pick up on them. I say that would make a short story. So I begin to type, I put nouns on the paper. I describe some of these toys. Next thing you know I have a short story. So I've learned not to throw things away because that's what a writer is, a collector of objects, symbols, metaphors. Call them what you will, but you never know when something here is going to turn into another story.”

Bradbury devoted himself to his craft, striving to spend at least four hours a day writing. Too poor to afford a college education, he spent hours in the library, eventually writing Fahrenheit 451 on a rented typewriter at the library of the University of California-Los Angeles.

That love of libraries stayed with him throughout his life and in a 2010 interview with the U.S. State Department he said, “what I think I can teach people is that a library is more important than a college or university.”

Despite his love for the written word, Bradbury did not limit his vision to stories and books. He consulted with the builders of the U.S. pavilion for the 1964 World Fair in New York and collaborated with the Walt Disney World resort in Florida for its Spaceship Earth exhibit at the futuristic Epcot Center.

Yet for all of his tales about science, technology and the future, Bradbury often shunned the conveniences of modern-day life.

He refused to drive a car, saying he witnessed an automobile accident as a young man that forever terrified him of driving. And for much of his life he refused to fly in airplanes.

He also had a lingering distrust of computers. In his 2010 State Department interview he said the information available to people on computers “is not quite the same as the information you get in a library.” He said if he had his way, “I would burn the computers and not the libraries.”

Famous Children's Author Leaves Legacy of Wild Things

by Penelope Poulou

Maurice Sendak, one of the most important American children’s book authors of the 20th century, has died at the age of 83 of complications from a recent stroke.

In “Where the Wild Things Are,” Max is a hyperactive boy with an imaginary world inhabited by wild monsters.

Maurice Sendak created this wild children's book, which became a movie in 2009. "Where the Wild Things Are" is his most famous creation.

At a New York exhibit of his illustrations,curator Nick Leone had this to say about Sendak's work. "Maurice Sendak, I think, to the world has made such a huge impression with his illustrations and his technique and his story because there's alwasy a story within the story. So once you read one of his stories and you understand beyond being a child, as an adult looking back, you can understand what the story is all about," he said.

In "The Wild Things," Max misbehaves. He escapes into a world where he leads a wild rumpus. 

For more than 50 years, Sendak  wrote and illustrated books focusing on kids’ fears, insecurities, and complexes.  “Where the Wild Things Are,” first published in 1963, changed the image of kids in literature as well-scrubbed  and well behaved.

Throughout his life, Sendak refused to be regarded as a children’s writer. He said he wrote about the human condition.

And he refused to give in to popular trends like ebooks.

Earlier this year, in one of his last TV interviews, he told Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert he was not fond of ebooks. "I hate those ebooks.  They cannot be the future.  They may well be. I will be dead," he said.

Sendak’s art went beyond books. In the second half of his career, he designed theatrical sets.

One of his happiest moments was when “Where the Wild Things Are” came out as a movie. “It feels very strange," he said. "This whole procedure is very strange.  I don't believe this is happening.  It's a dream, right?"

Maurice Sendak will always be remembered for Max and his monsters.  

He showed how the inner world of even the most frail is inhabited by wild things.

Award-Winning Travel Writer Patrick Leigh Fermor Dies at 96

Sunday, 12 June 2011

World renowned British travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor, who kidnapped the Nazi military commander of occupied Crete in World War II, has died at age 96.

Leigh Fermor's books about life in Greece and travel across Europe and the Caribbean are regarded as some of the best travel books ever written. They include The Traveller's Tree and Between the Woods and the Water.

Impatient with school, Leigh Fermor set off as a teenager in 1933 across the English Channel to the Netherlands on what turned out to be a three-year trek to Istanbul on foot, horseback, train, and car.

Later, as a British military officer, he disguised himself as a shepherd on Crete and led an operation to capture the German commander of the Nazi occupied Greek island.

Leigh Fermor eventually settled in Greece, where his books about his beloved adopted country made him one of Greece's most admired citizens and unofficial ambassadors of Greek culture.