Scott O'Dell

Scott O'Dell, born May 23 1898, died October 15 1989, is a children's author who wrote 26 books for young readers, along with three adult novels and four nonfiction books. He is most famously the author of the children's novel Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960), which won the 1960 Newbery Medal as well as a number of other awards, for The King's Fifth (1966), which was a Newbery Honor award book, and for The Black Pearl (1967), which was also a Newbery Honor book. Island of the Blue Dolphins has been translated into a number of languages and was made into a movie in 1964, starring Celia Kaye, Larry Domasin, Ann Daniel, and George Kennedy.

O'Dell is the founder of the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, an annual award of $5000(U.S.), which according to O'Dell's website is for a "a meritorious book published in the previous year for children or young adults."

O'Dell was born on Terminal Island in Los Angeles, California, to May Elizabeth Gabriel and Bennett Mason O'Dell. He attended multiple colleges, including Occidental College in 1919, the University of Wisconsin in 1920, Stanford University in 1920-1921, and the University of Rome in 1925. Before becoming a full time writer he worked in Hollywood as a cameraman and technical director, as a book columnist for the Los Angeles Mirror, and a book editor for the Los Angeles Daily News. He died of prostate cancer

O'Dell wrote primarily historical fiction. Many of his children's novels are about historical California and Mexico.

Sources

• Commire, Anne (ed.) (1990). Something About the Author Vol. 60. Gale Research Inc.: Detroit.