BANG, Molly Garrett 1943-

(Garrett Bang)

PERSONAL: Born December 29, 1943, in Princeton, NJ; daughter of Frederik Barry (a research physician) and Betsy (a translator and scientist; maiden name, Garrett) Bang; married Richard H. Campbell (an acoustics engineer), September 27, 1974; children: Monika. Education: Wellesley College, B.A., 1965; University of Arizona, M.A., 1969; Harvard University, M.A., 1971.

ADDRESSES: Home—89 Water St., Woods Hole, MA 02543.

CAREER: Author, illustrator, and translator. Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan, teacher of English, 1965-67; Asahi Shimbun, New York, NY, interpreter of Japanese, 1969; Baltimore Sun, Baltimore, MD, reporter, 1970. Editor of Woods Hole Passage; member of Woods Hole Community Association (trustee). Illustrator and consultant for UNICEF, Johns Hopkins Center for Medical Research and Training, and Harvard Institute for International Development.

AWARDS, HONORS: Notable book award, American Library Association, 1977, for Wiley and the Hairy Man, and 1980, for The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher; Boston Globe/Horn Book honor award for illustration, 1980, for The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher, 1984, for Dawn, and 1986, for The Paper Crane; Caldecott Honor Book awards, 1981, for The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher, 1983, for Ten, Nine, Eight, and 2000, for When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry; Kate Greenaway honor, Library Association, 1983; Hans Christian Andersen Award nomination, 1988, for The Paper Crane; Charlotte Zolotow Award, 2000, for When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry; nominee (with Monika Bang-Campbell), Boston Globe-Horn Book Award in picture book category, 2002, for Little Rat Sets Sail; Giverny Book Award for best children's science picture book, for Common Ground: The Water, Earth, and Air We Share.

WRITINGS:

FOR CHILDREN; ALL SELF-ILLUSTRATED

(Compiler) The Goblins Giggle, and Other Stories (folk tales), Scribner (New York, NY), 1973.

(As Garrett Bang; translator and compiler) Men from the Village Deep in the Mountains, and Other Japanese Folktales, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1973.

(Adaptor) Wiley and the Hairy Man (folktale), Macmillan (New York, NY), 1976.

(Editor) The Buried Moon and Other Stories (tales from China, Japan, England, and India), Scribner (New York, NY), 1977.

The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher, Four Winds Press (New York, NY), 1980.

(Adaptor) Tye May and the Magic Brush (Chinese folktale), Greenwillow (New York, NY), 1981.

Ten, Nine, Eight, Greenwillow (New York, NY), 1983.

(Adaptor) Dawn (Japanese folktale), Morrow (New York, NY), 1983.

(Adaptor) The Paper Crane (Chinese folktale), Greenwillow (New York, NY), 1985.

Delphine, Morrow (New York, NY), 1988.

Picture This: Perception and Composition, foreword by Rudolf Arnheim, Little, Brown (New York, NY), 1991.

Yellow Ball, Morrow (New York, NY), 1991.

One Fall Day, Greenwillow (New York, NY), 1994.

Sunshine's Book, Greenwillow (New York, NY), 1994.

Chattanooga Sludge, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1996.

Goose, Blue Sky Press (New York, NY), 1996.

Common Ground: The Water, Earth, and Air We Share, Blue Sky Press (New York, NY), 1997.

When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry, Blue Sky Press (New York, NY), 1999.

Picture This: How Pictures Work, SeaStar Books (New York, NY), 2000.

(Coauthor) Nobody Particular: One Woman's Fight to Save the Bays, Henry Holt (New York, NY), 2000.

Line in the Water, Henry Holt (New York, NY), 2000.

Tiger's Fall, Henry Holt (New York, NY), 2001.

My Light, Blue Sky Press (New York, NY), 2004.

ILLUSTRATOR

Betsy Bang, translator and editor, The Old Woman and the Red Pumpkin: A Bengali Folktale, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1975.

Betsy Bang, translator and editor, The Old Woman and the Rice Thief, Morrow (New York, NY), 1978.

Betsy Bang, translator and editor, Tuntuni, the Tailor Bird, Greenwillow (New York, NY), 1978.

Betsy Bang, translator and editor, The Demons of Rajpur, Greenwillow (New York, NY), 1980.

Judith Benet Richardson, David's Landing, Woods Hole Historical Collection (Woods Hole, MA), 1984.

Sylvia Cassedy and Suetake Kunihirs, translators, Red Dragonfly on My Shoulder (haiku), Harper (New York, NY), 1992.

(With others) Amy Cohn, editor, From Sea to Shining Sea: A Treasury of American Folklore and Folk Songs, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1993.

Robert and Warren Heydenberk, When I Get Angry, Blue Sky Press (New York, NY), 1999.

Star Livingstone, Harley, SeaStar Books (New York, NY), 2001.

Monika Bang-Campbell, Little Rat Sets Sail, Harcourt (New York, NY), 2002.

Monika Bang-Campbell, Little Rat Rides, Harcourt (New York, NY), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: Author and illustrator Molly Garrett Bang is noted for bringing an international flavor to her sometimes humorous, sometimes poignant retellings of folktales from many lands that are replanted in modern times. A world traveler—she lived for a time in Japan, India, and Mali, and is fluent in Japanese—Bang is interested in a wide variety of cultures, prompting her to gather stories and legends containing universally understood messages and, often with the professional help of her mother, translator Betsy Bang, adapt them for a U.S. audience. Bang has also written and published a number of her own stories; among these award-winning self-illustrated children's books are The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher and Ten, Nine, Eight, the latter published in 1983.

A story without words, The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher depicts an elderly black woman who is chased through a swamp by a scary, goblin-like being swathed in a flowing green cape who desires the strawberries the old woman has in her possession. "The skillfully executed, impressionistic illustrations, so full of meticulous, often startling details, offer an exciting visual treat to . . . readers," wrote Patricia Jean Cianciolo in Picture Books for Children. Ten, Nine, Eight is a counting book for bedtime that critics found unusual at the time of its publication because Bang depicted both the young girl preparing to go to bed and her father as non-Caucasian. Noting that the "simplicity" of Bang's illustrations adds to the meaning of the text, School Library Journal reviewer Sharon McElmeel called Ten, Nine, Eight "a delightfully satisfying book."

Among the folktales and legends collected by Bang is Wiley and the Hairy Man, which has its roots in the U.S. South, as a boy and his mother attempt to outwit a scary creature known only as the Hairy Man. Oriental traditions are reflected in Bang's writings from 1985, The Paper Crane, Tye May and the Magic Brush, and Men from the Village Deep in the Mountains, and Other Japanese Folktales. Stories from France, China, Japan, Ireland, and Germany are collected in The Goblins Giggle, and Other Stories. Reviewing The Paper Crane for Horn Book, contributor Hanna B. Zeiger noted, "In a world in which we use the word gentle to describe everything from laxatives to scouring powder, Molly Bang has restored dignity to the word with her truly gentle tale. . . . The book successfully blends Asian folklore themes with contemporary Western characterization."

Nobody Particular tells the story of shrimper Diane Wilson, who waged a single-handed fight to stop pollution of the East Texas bays where she and her family fished for a living. Bang notes in the book's introduction that she wrote the book because she wanted to present stories about people who make a difference in the world, and Wilson fit that category. As Linc Bedrosian wrote in National Fisherman, the book is inspiring: "You might think you're nobody in particular, but Wilson's story demonstrates that one person does have the power to make a particularly great difference."

Common Ground and Chattanooga Sludge express Bang's concern for the environment. Common Ground shows how the activities of a simple farming village affect the land, through increased livestock grazing, overpopulation, and poor land use. Bang makes clear that polluting the land and then leaving it to continue polluting somewhere else is not the answer, as land and wildlife are limited resources that cannot be replaced when they are gone. Chattanooga Sludge recounts the true story of John Todd, a scientist who worked to clean up one of the most polluted waterways in the United States, using natural cleansers such as toxin-eating bacteria and green plants. He was only partially successful, showing that pollution is easier to create than to remove.

Bang is also an advocate for literacy and for poor children having more access to books. She once commented, "If [children] only have flimsy paperbacks, they never experience the feel of a real book. Because they are less available to people who are poor, books become less relevant. In the midst of all this self-congratulation we have to think about that."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Children's Literature Review, Volume 8, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1985.

Cianciolo, Patricia Jean, Picture Books for Children, American Library Association (New York, NY), 1981.

St. James Guide to Children's Writers, 5th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

Silvey, Anita, editor, Children's Books and Their Creators, Houghton Mifflin (New York, NY), 1995.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 1, 1996, Carolyn Phelan, review of Chattanooga Sludge, p. 1500; September 15, 1996, Hazel Rochman, review of Goose, p. 239; October 1, 1997, Susan Dove Lempke, review of Common Ground: The Water, Earth, and Air We Share, p. 330; February 1, 1999, Stephanie Zvirin, review of When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry, p. 978; February 1, 2001, Michael Cart, review of Nobody Particular: One Woman's Fight to Save the Bays, p. 1050; November 1, 2001, Hazel Rochman, review of Tiger's Fall, p. 474; April 1, 2002, Kathy Broderick, review of Little Rat Sets Sail, p. 1326.

Childhood Education, Doris Burkhart, review of Harley, p. 172.

Horn Book, January, 1986, p. 45; September-October, 1988, p. 612; June, 1981, p. 295; July-August, 1992, p. 462; January-February, 1995, Lolly Robinson, review of One Fall Day, p. 47; November-December, 1997, Ellen Fader, review of Common Ground, p. 692; January, 2001, review of Nobody Particular, p. 106; July, 2001, review of Harley, p. 456.

Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2001, review of Tiger's Fall, p. 1352; February 1, 2002, review of Little Rat Sets Sail, p. 176.

National Fisherman, May, 2002, Linc Bedrosian, review of Nobody Particular, p. 9.

New York Times Book Review, May 3, 1992, p. 31.

Publishers Weekly, June 24, 1988, p. 110; March 22, 1991, p. 79; August 8, 1994, p. 428; April 22, 1996, review of Chattanooga Sludge, p. 72; October 28, 1996, review of Goose, p. 80; September 22, 1997, review of Common Ground, p. 81; January 1, 1999, p. 337; January 18, 1999, review of When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry, p. 337; December 11, 2000, review of Nobody Particular, p. 86; February 26, 2001, review of Harley, p. 87; January 7, 2002, p. 65; July 15, 2002, review of Little Rat Sets Sail, p. 75.

School Arts, December, 2000, Kent Anderson, review of Picture This: How Pictures Work, p. 56.

School Library Journal, May, 1983, p. 56; October, 1994, Joy Fleishhacker, review of One Fall Day, p. 85; August, 1996, Melissa Hudak, review of Chattanooga Sludge, p. 148; November, 1996, Jane Claes, review of Goose, p. 76; October, 1997, Margaret Bush, review of Common Ground, p. 88; January, 1999, Marianne Saccardi, review of When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry, p. 79; January, 2001, Kathy Piehl, review of Nobody Particular, p. 138; July, 2000, Ginny Harrell, review of Wiley and the Hairy Man, p. 55; June, 2001, Kathleen Kelly MacMillan, review of Harley, p. 125; December, 2001, Caroline Ward, review of Tiger's Fall, p. 132; June, 2002, Lynda S. Poling, review of Little Rat Sets Sail, p. 80.

Washington Post Book World, October 9, 1983, pp. 10-11.

Whole Earth, spring, 1998, review of Chattanooga Sludge, p. 11.*