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:
“Age. That period of life in which we compound for the vices that remain by reviling those we have no longer the vigor to commit.”
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914)
“Hard if, though cast away for life with Yankees,
A Frenchman couldn’t get his human rating!”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“The secret of the truly successful, I believe, is that they learned very early in life how not to be busy. They saw through that adage, repeated to me so often in childhood, that anything worth doing is worth doing well. The truth is, many things are worth doing only in the most slovenly, halfhearted fashion possible, and many other things are not worth doing at all.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)