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1947–2021 · South Bend (boundary); ties graded per author; no Osceola tie found
The historian for young readers. Phillip Hoose was born in South Bend on 31 May 1947 and grew up between South Bend, Angola, and Speedway. His Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (2009) won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature; We Were There, Too! (2001) and The Race to Save the Lord God Bird (2004) carry his double line — history and conservation — and Hey, Little Ant is his picture-book staple. Tie grade: born and part-raised in South Bend.
The resident nature writer. April Pulley Sayre was born 11 April 1966 at Greenville, South Carolina, moved to South Bend in 1996, and lived there until her death on 6 November 2021. Her children's nature books — photograph-illustrated, science-first — are counted between sixty and eighty-plus titles in the sources reached, and both ends of that range stand; no single count is adopted. With her husband Jeff Sayre she also worked on the Kaufman Field Guide to Nature of the Midwest (2015), doing the plant research. Tie grade: resident — a quarter-century of South Bend residence, chosen, not natal.
The field guide from a local childhood. Kenn Kaufman was born in South Bend in 1954 and began birding there at the age of six; the Kaufman field guides to birds and to butterflies grew out of that local childhood of watching. Tie grade: born here, formed by this ground's birds.
The Gothic children's novelist the university formed. John Bellairs was born 17 January 1938 at Marshall, Michigan, took his B.A. at the University of Notre Dame in 1959 (magna cum laude) and his M.A. at Chicago in 1960, and wrote the Lewis Barnavelt Gothic children's novels. Tie grade: university-formed — Notre Dame made the scholar; the novels were written elsewhere.
The cluster is a South Bend and Notre Dame cluster entire. No children's, nature, or field-guide author with an Osceola or Penn Township tie appears in the publisher and catalogue records reached.
Sources: publisher and National Book Award records for Hoose; publisher and obituary records for Sayre; field-guide publisher records for Kaufman; university and publisher records for Bellairs.