Phyllis Root
Phyllis Root is the award-winning author of over fifty fiction and non-fiction picture books, including Big Momma Makes the World and One Duck Stuck. She taught at the Vermont College MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program for ten years and has been teaching at Hamline University’s Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults program for the past thirteen years.
Phyllis began writing for children in 1979 and has since published over 50 picture books for children, both fiction and also non-fiction, as well as a middle grade novel Lilly and the Pirates. Big Momma Makes the World, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury, received the Boston Globe Horn Book Award. Lucia and the Light, illustrated by Mary Grand Pre, won a McKnight Grant. Both Plant a Pocket of Prairie and One North Star received John Burroughs Riverby Awards for nature writing. (She has also written one grown-up book: Searching for Minnesota’s Native Wildflowers: A Guide for Beginners, Botanists, and Everyone in Between with photos by Kelly Povo, published by University of Minnesota Press, 2018.)
Phyllis lives in Minneapolis with my cat, my garden, friends and family, and the occasional caterpillar turning into a butterfly.
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Awards
Northeastern Minnesota Book Award, 2017
John Burroughs Association Riverby Award, 2017
Midwest Independent Booksellers Award, 2017
John Burroughs Association Riverby Award, 2015
Delaware Diamonds Award Nominee, 2012
Oppenheimer Toy Portfolio Gold Award, 2011
Smithsonian’s Notable Books for Children,2010
McKnight Loft Award for Children’s Literature, 2006
Boston Globe Horn Book Award, 2003
Nebraska Golden Sowers Award Nominee, 2003
Sheffield Children’s Book Award shortlist, 2002