Florence Crannell Means


Florence Crannell Means was an American writer for children and young adults. She received a Newbery Medal honor award.

Biography

Florence Crannell Means was born May 15, 1891, in Baldwinsville, New York.
Her novel about Japanese internment, The Moved-Outers, won a Newbery Medal honor award in 1946.
In his "Without Evasion" essay in The Horn Book Magazine, Jan/Feb 1945, Howard Pease says: "Only at infrequent intervals do you find a story intimately related to this modern world, a story that takes up a modern problem and thinks it through without evasion. Of our thousands of books, I can find scarcely half a dozen that merit places on this almost vacant shelf in our libraries; and of our hundreds of authors, I can name only three who are doing anything to fill this void in children's reading. These three authors – may someone present each of them with a laurel wreath – are Doris Gates, John R. Tunis, and Florence Crannell Means." Many of Means' books dealt with the experiences of minorities in America, such as Japanese Americans in The Moved-Outers and African Americans in Shuttered Windows.
She married Carl Bell Means and died November 19, 1980 at Boulder, Colorado. Means and her husband are buried at Crown Hill Cemetery, Wheat Ridge, Colorado.

Works