HULL, Maureen 1949-

PERSONAL: Born August 28, 1949, in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada; daughter of Charlotte Morrison Hull; married David B. Harding, October 1, 1979; children: Amy Harding, Moira Harding. Ethnicity: "Scots/English." Education: Attended Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Dalhousie University, and Pictou Fisheries School.

ADDRESSES: Home and offıce—1 Harding Ln., Pictou Island, Nova Scotia B0K 1JO, Canada.

CAREER: Held various positions in the wardrobe department of the Neptune Theatre, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, 1970-75; fisher, Pictou Island, Nova Scotia, Canada, 1977-2000; writer, 1992—.

MEMBER: Writers' Union of Canada, Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia, Canadian Society of Children's Authors, Illustrators, and Performers, Pictou Island Community Association (past president and vice president).

AWARDS, HONORS: Winner, Atlantic Writers' Competition, for poetry and short fiction; awarded several grants from Canada Council and Nova Scotia Arts Council.

WRITINGS:

Righteous Living: Stories, Turnstone Press (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada), 1999.

Wild Cameron Women (picture book), illustrated by Judith Christine Mills, Stoddart Kids (Toronto, Canada), 2000.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A young adult novel, The View from a Kite; picture books, The Best Way Home, Rainy Days with Bear, The Guinness Book of World Records Birthday Cake, and Anemone; an early reader novel, Exotic Pets; an adult novel, Clearing by Dawn, due for publication in 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: "I was born and grew up on Cape Breton Island," Maureen Hull told CA. "I subsequently moved to Halifax where I attended the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and Dalhousie University, and worked in the costume department of Neptune Theatre.

"In 1976, I moved again, to another, smaller, island off the coast of Nova Scotia, in the Northumberland Strait (present population: twenty-one). Here, on Pictou Island, I fished lobster with my husband, and we raised two daughters.

"My writing for children grew out of my years of home-schooling my daughters. We wrote stories together as part of the learning process and, when they moved on to correspondence courses, I continued writing, both adult and children's work. As a member of the Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia, I have participated in the Writers-in-the-Schools program for the past five years, reading and conducting workshops in schools around the province. My daughters, now at university, remain my best and most reliable critics."

Canadian history plays a small but crucial role in Hull's first children's book, Wild Cameron Women. In this picture-book story about a child's irrational fear of bears coming out of the closet in the dark of the night, a grandmother invokes the history of Canada, which long ago proved a haven to Scots driven from their lands. Nana Cameron tells granddaughter Kate about another young Kate who lived two hundred years before, and who, with the aid of the family tartan and some choice Gaelic words, was able to frighten off a bear. With the story Nana delivers three nightgowns made from the family tartan, and young Kate gathers her courage and her Gaelic words to frighten away the beasties. While Susan Marie Pitard, who reviewed Wild Cameron Women for School Library Journal, found "the story-within-a story construct . . . a bit muddled," Patricia Morley, a reviewer for the Canadian Book Review Annual, asserted that "Maureen Hull's witty, reassuring tale . . . is a delightfully clever way of calming" the fears of young children in the night.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Canadian Book Review Annual, 2000, Patricia Morley, review of Wild Cameron Women, pp. 6072-6073.

School Library Journal, December, 2000, Susan Marie Pitard, review of Wild Cameron Women, p. 111.