Ray, Delia 1963-

Personal

Born April 29, 1963, in Newport News, VA; daughter of Edward Joseph (an aeronautics engineer) and Roberta Olivia (a reading teacher) Ray; married Matthew Andrew Howard III (a neurosurgeon) June 28, 1986; children: Caroline O'Connell Howard, Susan Davis Howard, one other daughter. Education: University of Virginia, B.A., 1985. Religion: Roman Catholic.

Addresses

Home—Iowa City, IA. E-mail—deliarayhoward@aol.com.

Career

Vernon Publications, Inc. (periodicals publisher), Seattle, WA, staff writer, 1985; Laing Communications, Inc. (book publisher), Seattle, editor, 1986-89.

Member

Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (Seattle chapter).

Awards, Honors

American Library Association (ALA) Notable Book designation, Bank Street College Children's Book of the Year designation, NCSS/Children's Book Council Notable Children's Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies, all 1991, all for A Nation Torn; New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age designation, and YALSA Recommended title, both 1992, both for Behind the Blue and Gray; Society of School Librarians International Book Award, 2004, and six state reading list nominations, all for Ghost Girl.

Writings

Gold! The Klondike Adventure, Lodestar (New York NY), 1989.

A Nation Torn: The Story of How the Civil War Began, Lodestar (New York, NY), 1990.

Behind the Blue and Gray: The Soldier's Life in the Civil War, Lodestar (New York, NY), 1991.

Ghost Girl: A Blue Ridge Mountain Story, Clarion (New York, NY), 2003.

Singing Hands, Clarion Books (New York, NY), 2006.

Sidelights

Delia Ray began her writing career as the author of several nonfiction books that bring to life interesting aspects of American history for younger readers. In more recent years she has moved into fiction while continuing to inspire her readers with her love of history; both her novels Ghost Girl: A Blue Ridge Mountain Story and Singing Hands take place in the American South during the early twentieth century. Praising Ghost Girl, a Kirkus Reviews writer noted that Ray's "loving attention to setting, character, and detail" enriches her story, which the critic called "a quiet and subtle evocation of a time and a place."

In her first book, Gold! The Klondike Adventure, Ray brings to life the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897 through the eyes of four intriguing men. Calling Gold! "a sophisticated portrait of the 1897 Klondike excitement," Henry Mayer wrote in the New York Times Book Review that this book "will help [elementary-grade students], as well as their middle-school compatriots east of the Sierra Nevada, sense the human drama of the gold rush phenomenon."

In both A Nation Torn: The Story of How the Civil War Began and Behind the Blue and Gray: The Soldier's Life in the Civil War Ray focuses on the conflict that divided the United States during the mid-nineteenth century: the U.S. Civil War. A Nation Torn follows the fateful chronology of events, from the actions of abolitionist John Brown at Harper's Ferry to the speeches of Henry Clay, that led to war, while eyewitness accounts and civil war-era photographs help evoke the day-to-day lives of the young men from both north and south

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who came together as their two world collided in Behind the Blue and Gray. Referencing the wealth of photographs in A Nation Torn, a Horn Book critic dubbed the work a "beautifully framed … presentation of the beginning of the Civil War [that] has been expertly crafted."

Ray moves to fiction in her more-recent books, which include Ghost Girl. Based on the letters of a young teacher named Christine Vest, the story introduces eleven-year-old April Sloane. Nicknamed Ghost Girl because of her white-blonde hair and waif-like appearance, April lives a hardscrabble life with her family in rural Virginia. While news comes that President and Mrs. Herbert Hoover plan to build a school near her home, April is excited by the possibility of learning to read. With the help of a supportive young teacher, April confronts a tragedy within her own family as well as the challenges she confronts at school, ultimately gaining a sense of her own strength and resilience. Reviewing Ghost Girl in Horn Book, Robin Smith praised the novel as "poignant, realistic, and somber" coming-of-age tale in which "nothing is pat or predictable." In her School Library Journal review of the book, Terrie Dorio called April "an engaging character," and noted that Ray "seemlessly incorporated historical fact into the [novel's] narrative."

Again returning readers to the early twentieth century, Singing Hands is set in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1948, and introduces another preteen dealing with hardship. In this case it is Gussie Davis, a twelve year old whose confusion over her own identity as a hearing child in a deaf family results in unruly and rebellious behavior. For disrupting her deaf father's ministry at St. Jude's Church for the Deaf, Gussie must now assist at services, where she learns first hand about prejudice and also learns how to deal with the handicaps within her own family. While noting that the novel contains "an excess of subplots" involving Gussie's blossoming relationships with a variety of people, School Library Journal reviewer Kathleen Kelly MacMillan concluded that Ray's "exploration of Gussie's feelings" and her sense of disconnection from her family as a member of the hearing world, is presented in a "heartfelt" fashion. Praising the coming-of-age novel as "superb," a Kirkus Reviews writer cited Ray's "realistically sympathetic characters" as well as the "kindness, humor, and playfulness" of the story's young heroine. Singing Hands was inspired by Ray's mother and especially by her grandfather, a deaf man who worked as an advocate for other deaf people during the same time and in the same place wherein which the novel takes place.

Ray once told SATA: "When I was young, writing came easily. My best friend and I spent our summer vacations writing dozens of poems and then collecting them into little, staple-bound books. When we had finished reading all of the Greek myths in our library books, we invented our own gods and goddesses and copied down complicated stories about them, full of wild love affairs and adventures. In the sixth grade, I wrote the school Christmas play during lunch and science class. And in high school, I was unfortunately the one who was chosen to write the poem for our senior-prom program. By the time I reached college, I was enrolling in all of the creative writing classes I could find and naturally telling myself that some day I was going to be a ‘real’ writer.

"But as graduation rolled closer, I finally admitted to myself that twelve short stories and a few school magazine articles were not going to earn me my dream career. Even more important, I had to turn my skills into something that could pay my monthly rent. So I enrolled in the Radcliffe Publishing Course, which covered all aspects of making books and magazines, hoping to find some answers.

"While most of the other graduates migrated to the publishing capital of New York City, I followed my husband to Seattle, Washington, where he was facing an eight-year residency in neurosurgery. Since the publishing industry in Seattle is limited to a few small companies, I knew I was lucky to find an editing job in a start-up firm run by one of my instructors from Radcliffe. In the next three years, I edited every type of manuscript, from gory tales of Alaska bear maulings to reports on nuclear waste management.

"Suddenly, the miracle opportunity struck. The editors at Lodestar had seen an adult book that my company produced about the Klondike Gold Rush and wanted one for children on the same subject. And … my boss was going to trust me to write it.

"Looking back now, I know writing nonfiction for ten to fourteen year olds was the best crash course in authorship I could have had. The task forced me to organize my ideas scrupulously. I had to explain complex concepts, such as gold-panning methods and the Missouri Compromise, in the clearest and simplest terms. I was also determined to make history exciting, perhaps to make up for all the dull history books that I was forced to read as a child. I wanted my factual accounts to read like fiction, with descriptions of how people looked and felt, with dialogue and anecdotes that captured the fever of the times and pulled the reader in."

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Booklist, November 15, 2003, Hazel Rochman, review of Ghost Girl: A Blue Ridge Mountain Story, p. 610; May 1, 2006, Cindy Dobrez, review of Singing Hands, p. 85.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, November, 2003, Karen Coats, review of Ghost Girl, p. 122; June, 2006, Deborah Stevenson, review of Singing Hands, p. 467.

Horn Book, September-October, 1990, review of A Nation Torn: The Story of How the Civil War Began, pp. 623-624; July-August, 1991, Anita Silvey, review of Behind the Blue and Gray, p. 482; January-February, 2004, Robin Smith, review of Ghost Girl, p. 91; May-June, 2006, Deirdre F. Baker, review of Singing Hands, p. 326.

Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2003, review of Ghost Girl, p. 1129; April 1, 2006, review of Singing Hands, p. 355.

New York Times Book Review, November 12, 1989, Henry Mayer "American Treasure Hunts," p. 44.

School Library Journal, December, 1990, Trevelyn Jones, review of A Nation Torn, p. 224; August, 1991, review of Behind the Blue and Gray, p. 207; November, 2003, Terrie Dorio, review of Ghost Girl, p. 146; July, 2006, Kathleen Kelly MacMillan, review of Singing Hands, p. 110.

ONLINE

Delia Ray Home Page,http://www.deliaray.com (June 15, 2007).