Life
De Jong was born in the village of Wierum, of the province of Friesland, in the Netherlands. The family emigrated to the United States in 1914. Meindert attended Dutch Calvinist secondary schools and Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and entered the University of Chicago, but left without graduating.
He held various jobs during the Great Depression, and it was at the suggestion of a local librarian that he began writing children's books. His first book The Big Goose and the Little White Duck was published in 1938. He wrote several more books before joining the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II serving in China.
After the war he resumed writing, and for several years resided in Mexico. He returned for a time to Michigan. After settling in North Carolina, he returned to Michigan for the final years of his life.
Six of De Jong's books were illustrated by Maurice Sendak.
Read more about this topic: Meindert DeJong
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Human contacts have been so highly valued in the past only because reading was not a common accomplishment.... The world, you must remember, is only just becoming literate. As reading becomes more and more habitual and widespread, an ever-increasing number of people will discover that books will give them all the pleasures of social life and none of its intolerable tedium.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)