Phillip Hoose — the children's author

born 1947 · born in South Bend, raised in Indiana

The fame: Phillip Hoose writes nonfiction for young readers at the highest level the field has: Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (2009) — the first full account of the fifteen-year-old who refused to give up her Montgomery bus seat months before Rosa Parks — won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature and was named a Newbery Honor book; The Race to Save the Lord God Bird (2004), the story of the ivory-billed woodpecker, won the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for nonfiction; We Were There, Too!: Young People in U.S. History was a National Book Award finalist, and The Boys Who Challenged Hitler (2015) carried his method — history told at the age of the people who lived it — to occupied Denmark. He also writes picture books, including Hey, Little Ant, and worked for years as a conservationist with the Nature Conservancy.

The tie, exactly: Hoose was born in South Bend on May 31, 1947, and grew up in the Indiana towns of South Bend, Angola, and Speedway — publisher's phrasing, and this section keeps it whole rather than trimming it into a hometown claim the record doesn't make. South Bend is his birthplace and one of his three childhood towns; Indiana University is his school. The tie is a birth and a shared Indiana boyhood, printed at that strength.

Sources:

1. Macmillan (publisher) author biography — "He was born in South Bend, Indiana, and grew up in the towns of South Bend, Angola, and Speedway, Indiana."
2. National Book Foundation and award records — the 2009 National Book Award for Claudette Colvin, the Newbery Honor, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for The Race to Save the Lord God Bird.