April Pulley Sayre — the resident nature writer

1966–2021 · LIVED AND DIED IN SOUTH BEND

The tie. April Pulley Sayre was born in Greenville, South Carolina, on 11 April 1966, trained as a biologist at Duke, and took her MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2000. Her tie to this city is residence, printed exactly: her publisher's biography states that she and her husband lived in South Bend, Indiana, and the Publishers Weekly obituary records that she died in this city on 6 November 2021, at fifty-five. She is the fullest modern case of a working author the city held by adoption rather than birth — and the husband's work entwines with this section's, as the field-guide entry below shows: Jeff Sayre is a co-author of the Kaufman Field Guide to Nature of the Midwest.

The books. She wrote science and nature books for children — more than sixty-five of them by her publisher's count; a memorial account of her career puts the shelf above eighty, and the two figures are printed here unreconciled, as the record gives them. The early work includes If You Should Hear the Honey Guide (1995) and Turtle, Turtle, Watch Out! (2000). The award record of the middle shelf: The Bumblebee Queen (2005) won a John Burroughs Award, her third; Stars Beneath Your Bed (2005) won the AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize, the American Library Association's notable-books citation among its honors; Vulture View (Henry Holt, 2007) won a Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor. The photo books of her last decade stand from Simon & Schuster's Beach Lane imprint: Raindrops Roll (January 2015), an Orbis Pictus Honor Book; Best in Snow (2016); Full of Fall (2017); Bloom Boom! (2019). Her food chants — Rah, Rah, Radishes!, Go, Go, Grapes! and Let's Go Nuts! — photograph the produce of this city's own Farmer's Market, on the Indiana Center for the Book's own account of them, and her last book, Thank You, Earth: A Love Letter to Our Planet, appeared from Greenwillow in 2021, the year of her death.

Sources:

1. HarperCollins, author biography — the birth (Greenville, South Carolina, 11 April 1966), the Duke biology degree and Vermont College MFA (2000), "over 65 books," the South Bend residence, and the award list: John Burroughs Awards (the third for The Bumblebee Queen, 2005), the AAAS/Subaru Prize for Stars Beneath Your Bed (2005), the Geisel Honor for Vulture View (Henry Holt, 2007).
2. Publishers Weekly obituary, as carried in the career memorial — died in South Bend, 6 November 2021, age 55; the Beach Lane photo books Raindrops Roll (January 2015, Orbis Pictus Honor), Best in Snow (2016), Full of Fall (2017), Bloom Boom! (2019), and Thank You, Earth (Greenwillow, 2021); the same memorial's count of more than eighty books.
3. Indiana Center for the Book (Indiana State Library) — the food chants: Rah, Rah, Radishes!, Go, Go, Grapes!, Let's Go Nuts!, with the South Bend Farmer's Market's produce credited as their visual source.