Jan greenberg biography

Since the 1990s, Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan have been researching and writing books about art and artists for young readers.
Jan Greenberg has written for magazines and newspapers including Food Arts, National Culinary Review, Hudson Valley Magazine, and Time Out New York.
In American Eye: Eleven Artists of the Twentieth Century, Greenberg and Jordan present biographies of such major artists as Thomas Hart Benton, Stuart Davis.

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We met in 1978 when Jan submitted the manuscript for her first children’s novel, A Season In Between, to Farrar, Straus & Giroux where Sandra was then Editor-in-Chief of Children’s Books. More than ten years of friendship later we hatched the idea for The Painter’s Eye and decided to focus on postwar American art. Not only was this topic a gap in the bookshelf (every nonfiction writer’s dream), but also we could talk to living artists about subjects we thought would interest young readers.

Our fourteenth book together Two Brothers Four Hands: The Artists Alberto and Diego Giacomettiwas inspired by a visit to the National Gallery in Washington DC some years ago. We’d been invited by the Library of Congress to celebrate our book Ballet for Martha: Making Appalachian Spring, along with our illustrator Brian Floca and editor Neal Porter. Dancers from the Martha Graham troupe came from New York and we all spent a wonderful morning presenting to an audience of school children, teachers and librarians. A free afternoon found us wanderi

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Children's Author David L. Harrison's Blog

As a child, I always was reading. My mother would say, “Jan, it’s too nice outside to stick your nose in a book all day.” My taste in literature was eclectic, although novels were my favorite. I did go through a stage where I read what we referred to as “those orange books,” biographies of notable Americans, one of the first non-fiction series in school libraries. My favorite was Sacagawea, Girl Indian Guide. But it never occurred to me when I made-up stories to entertain my little brother that I would become a writer. I was a curious kid and noticed everything about everybody. I could mimic the way people talked, their facial expressions, tone of voice, what they wore, what we talked about….the white rabbit fur coat that my friend Sherry wore to school in second grade, a nursery school aide who made me keep my eyes closed all through rest period, the smell of ink at my mother’s easel, the lump in my throat when she left every morning for work. Always outspoken, I had such a fine sense of the ridiculous that my Uncle Rudy call

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Greenberg, Jan 1942–

PERSONAL: Born December 29, 1942, in St. Louis, MO; daughter of Alexander (a manufacturer) and Lilian (an advertising executive) Schonwald; married Ronald Greenberg (an art dealer), August 31, 1963; children: Lynne, Jeanne, Jacqueline. Education: Washington University, B.A., 1964; Webster University, M.A.T., 1971. Hobbies and other interests: Hiking, reading, bridge, travel.

ADDRESSES: Home and office—St. Louis, MO.

CAREER: St. Louis Public Schools, St. Louis, MO, teacher, 1969–72; Forest Park Community College, St. Louis, instructor in English composition, 1973–75; Webster University, St. Louis, director and instructor in aesthetic education M.A.T. program, 1974–79; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis, book reviewer, 1975–80; CEMREL (National Education Laboratory), St. Louis, researcher, 1976–78; freelance writer, 1978–. Presenter of workshops and lectures on aesthetic education and writing for young readers.

MEMBER: PEN, Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, Missouri Arts Council.

AWARDS, HONORS:American Library Associatio