Virginia Hamilton, author of many highly regarded children's books, died of breast cancer at a Dayton, Ohio, hospital on February 19. She was 65.
Over the course of her career, Hamilton received a number of awards, including the Newbery Medal, the National Book Award, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal and the Hans Christian Andersen Medal. She was the first African-American to win a Newbery Medal and also the first children's writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. Hamilton published her debut book, Zeely, in 1967, and went on to write more than 35 books for children, including M.C. Higgins, the Great; The Planet of Junior Brown; Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush and The People Could Fly.
Hamilton attended Antioch College and continued at Ohio State University and the New School for Social Research in New York City. She married poet Arnold Adoff in 1960. The couple eventually settled in Yellow Springs, Ohio, on the farm that Hamilton's grandfather, who had been a slave, bought in the 1850s.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the American Cancer Society, the Urban League, the NAACP and the Virginia Hamilton Conference on Multicultural Literature for Youth.
