New Orleans Storyteller Coleen Salley Dies at 79

By Rocco Staino -- School Library Journal, 9/17/2008 12:07:00 PM

Raspy voiced New Orleans storyteller Coleen Salley died yesterday in Baton Rouge, LA, at the age of 79. She was the author and star of the Epossumondas (Harcourt) books, a series of stories illustrated by Caldecott Honor artist Janet Stevens about a possum based on the southern “noodlehead” stories.

Salley became ill this summer, and after many tests, it was discovered she had Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.

Called “The Grocery Cart Queen,” Salley was a colorful character on the New Orleans Mardis Gras circuit and her image was immortalized in Janet Stevens’s book To Market, To Market (Harcourt, 1997). Tomie DePaola, Robert San Souci, and James Marshall have dedicated books to Salley, whose French Quarter home was a literary salon, where she often hosted children’s writers, publishers, and librarians. She retired from the University of New Orleans as distinguished professor of children’s literature.

Catherine Balkin, former associate at Harper Children’s Books and principal with Balkin’s Buddies, which arranges author and illustrator visits for schools and libraries, and a longtime friend of Salley’s says, “Coleen was a force to be reckoned with and a woman with a big heart. Coleen epitomized New Orleans, and New Orleans epitomized her.”

Salley created a literacy foundation that bares both her name and that of Bill Morris, who was vice president at Harper Children’s Books for 50 years until his death in 2003. The foundation’s mission is to promote an appreciation and love of books and reading by providing the enriching experience of meeting and hearing authors and illustrators of children's books.

A Jazz Funeral will be held on Saturday, September 27 at 10:30 a.m. in New Orleans.

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