Charlotte Huck, Children's Book Expert

By Staff -- School Library Journal, 5/1/2005

Children's literature expert and author Charlotte Huck, 82, died in April at her home in Redlands, CA. The cause was melanoma.

Huck joined the faculty of Ohio State University in 1955, where she created the first-ever graduate program in children's literature. She also wrote the definitive textbook on the subject, Children's Literature in the Elementary School (McGraw-Hill, 2003), now in its eighth edition. Huck's concept of "webbing," in which every subject taught to a child is supported by reading, has inspired many of her students who went on to launch children's literature programs across the country.

"[Huck] was quite revolutionary in her belief that children would learn reading best by actually reading books," says Anita Silvey, author of 100 Best Books for Children (Houghton, 2004). "She was opposed to learning phonics or vowel sounds, although now the pendulum has swung back the opposite way."

Huck also found time to serve on the Caldecott and Newbery award committees, was a former president of the National Council of Teachers of English, and even served on the board of her local nursery school. But it was only after her retirement from Ohio State in 1988 that Huck turned to the craft that she had promoted—writing children's books. Her five titles include Princess Furball (1989) and Secret Places (1993, both Greenwillow).