PRIZE WINNERS

From the World Writers series comes this serviceable collection of short biographies of award-winning children's book authors: Beverly Cleary, Roald Dahl, Madeleine L'Engle, Betsy Byars, Virginia Hamilton, Walter Dean Myers, Gary Paulsen, Jean Little, Richard Peck, and Katherine Paterson. Organized in no apparent order and illustrated with black-and-white photographs, each biography begins with a short anecdote capturing the flavor of the subject's childhood and comprising some of the volume's liveliest writing. The straightforward accounts that make up the bulk of the text are a bit dry but contain plenty of useful information—all available elsewhere—distilled into one book. The material's richness of detail rises in direct proportion to the availability of autobiographical sources. (bibliographies, index) (Biography. 10-14)