STORY BY MEGAN DEMAREST
WITH Katherine Paterson
Katherine Paterson is the beloved author of more than 40 books, including 18 novels for children and young people. She has twice won the Newbery Medal, for Bridge to Terabithia in 1978 and Jacob Have I Loved in 1981. The Master Puppeteer won the National Book Award in 1977 and The Great Gilly Hopkins won the National Book Award in 1979 and was also a Newbery Honor Book. For the body of her work, she received the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1998, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in 2006, and in 2000 was named a“ Living Legend” by the Library of Congress.
She is a vice-president of the National Children’ s Book and Literacy Alliance and is a member of the board of trustees for Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is also an honorary lifetime member of the International Board of Books for Young People( IBBYP) and an Alida Cutts lifetime member of the U. S. section, United States Board of Books for Young People( USBBY). She was the 2010-2011 National Ambassador for Young People’ s Literature. She’ s also a mother of four, a grandmother of nine, and has been an inspiration to young readers for the past several decades. I had the honor and privilege of sitting
38 VERMONT MAGAZINE
NICK BURCHARD
down with the award-winning author for a chat about her career, her family, and her move to Vermont 38 years ago. I asked Katherine what she wanted to talk about first. She pointed to her most recent book sitting on the table in front of us: Jella Lepman and Her Library of Dreams: The Woman Who Rescued a Generation of Children and Founded the World’ s Largest Children’ s Library, published in February 2025 with illustrations by Sally Deng. Having just finished reading the book myself, I thought it was a fitting start to a meaningful conversation. Born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1891, Jella Lepman was a Jewish woman who fled the Nazis and later started a children’ s library in post-World War II Germany, when the country and the
world were still reeling from its devastation. She wanted to restore the childhood that had been denied the children of Germany who had grown up experiencing years of conflict and violence. She thought the best way to accomplish that was through books, and she then reached out to publishers all over the world asking for donations to create a library. Against all odds, she succeeded.
Katherine: Jella is a woman I’ ve known about as long as I’ ve been involved with the IBBYP. Of course, she’ s the patron saint, the founder. I never met her. She died before I became a writer, but she overcame such odds. Everybody I talked to that knew her said,‘ she accomplished great things,