3/12/2003

Contact: K.E. Schwab  -- 724-738-2199;  e-mail: karl.schwab@sru.edu

PUBLIC INVITED –

AWARD-WINNING PITTSBURGH CHILDREN’S AUTHOR TO LECTURE AT SRU

             SLIPPERY ROCK, Pa. – Pittsburgh’s award-winning children's author Elizabeth Fitzgerald Howard, best known for “Virgie Goes to School with Us Boys” and “Aunt Flossie's Hats (And Crab Cakes Later),” will discuss her work with students, faculty and the public as part of an upcoming visit to Slippery Rock University.

           The African-American author explains that she draws inspiration for her children's books from her own family's stories. Her “Aunt Flossie’s Hat” book provides a family story associated with each of a great-great-aunt’s hats. Her 7 p.m. March 20 public lecture will be held in the Reading Room of Bailey Library. On March 21, she will entertain third graders from Farrell and Slippery Rock elementary schools.

                      Howard’s awards include the Pennsylvania School Library Association Outstanding Author for 2002, an American Library Association Notable Book award, the Parent's Choice Award for Picture Books and the International Reading Association Teacher's Choice Award. Her “Virgie Goes to School with Us Boys” received a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award. Howard is a Radcliffe graduate and holds a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh. She formerly taught literature at the University of West Virginia.

           The visits, designed to promote diversity and an appreciation of multicultural literature, are co-sponsored by an SRU College of Education Rock Grant, the President's Commission for Women, and the university’s elementary education department.

PN, PgN, WPN, PR, PT