Leila Berg

Leila berg
Born 12 November 1917
Salford, England, UK
Died 17 April 2012 (aged 94)
Occupation Author, journalist, political activist
Years active 1948–1999
Awards Eleanor Farjeon Award (1973)
Website
aspects.net/~leilaberg/

Leila Berg (12 November 1917 – 17 April 2012)[1] was a British children's author, known also as a journalist and writer on education and children's rights. She began writing in a more realistic and gritty style, for younger children, in the 1960s, in the Nippers series of readers in an influential move designed to bring children's books closer to ordinary, real, urban life, and away from the Janet and John reader style. (And, probably, the comforts of Enid Blyton's world, a ubiquitous influence of the period.) She was awarded the Eleanor Farjeon Award in 1973 for her work.

She was brought up in Salford, Lancashire, in a Jewish doctor's family; she wrote vividly about this part of her life in Flickerbook (1997). There she describes also later meetings in Cambridge through her older brother, particularly with Margot Heinemann, and J. B. S. Haldane whom she would reference obliquely in the early Chunky books. She associated with Young Communist League members at the time of the Spanish Civil War (in which she lost two lovers) and eventually joined it. Her first job as a journalist was with the British communist daily paper The Daily Worker (later renamed The Morning Star).

She was influenced in her thinking by psychologist Susan Isaacs. After working as a journalist in World War II, during which she married and started a family, she started to write children's fiction. She also took an interest in the progressive education movement of A. S. Neill, Michael Duane, head of Risinghill School, and John Holt. She became children's editor for the publisher Methuen. As she said, All my life I have sought to empower children (speech at honorary degree ceremony,[2] University of Essex).

Leila Berg died on 17 April 2012.[3]

Works

References

  1. ↑ "Leila Berg". The Daily Telegraph (London). 6 May 2012.
  2. ↑ Available as an RTF file
  3. ↑ Rosemary Stones (23 April 2012). "Leila Berg obituary | Books | guardian.co.uk". The Guardian (London). Retrieved 2012-04-23.
  4. ↑ Letter to John Holt

External links