Barbara smucker author biography essay

American novelist (1915–2003)

Barbara Claassen Smucker (September 1, 1915 – July 29, 2003) was an American writer, primarily of children's fiction, who lived in Canada from 1969 to 1993.

She is the author of twelve books, including Underground to Canada (1977) which is still widely studied in Canadian schools and Days of Terror (1979) which won the Canada Council Children's Literature Prize. In 1988, she received the Vicky Metcalf Award for a distinguished body of writing.^[1][2]

Born Barbara Claassen in Newton, Kansas,^[3] she studied for a year at Bethel College and then went to Kansas State University where she received a bachelor's degree in journalism in 1936.

After graduation, she taught high school for a year and then worked as a journalist for The Evening Kansan-Republican. In 1939 she married Donovan Smucker, a Mennonite pastor and academic specialising in Christian ethics.

They moved to Canada in 1969, where Donovan