Larry Dane Brimner is an American writer, teacher, and presenter. He is the author of more than 150 children's books.
Background
Brimner was born on November 5, 1949, in St. Petersburg, Florida, the son of George Frederick Brimner, a naval officer, and Evelyn Abernathy-Blair, an attorney and homemaker. Brimner spent much of his childhood on Kodiak Island in Alaska. There was no television and only sporadic radio, and so his parents read to him a lot. By the age of four, he was living in a rural suburb of San Diego, California, where his father had been reassigned to command a ship.
Education
Brimner graduated from San Diego State University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1971 and later received a Master of Arts in 1981.
Career
Brimner is the prolific author of more than 100 volumes, most of which entertain or inform younger children. He first developed his love of books during his own childhood, when his naval officer father was stationed in Alaska. In the absence of television and radio, his parents read to him, not only from children's books, but from the works of Twain, Steinbeck, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald. By the age of four, Brimner was reading simple sentences, and soon he was composing his own little stories.
Brimner changed majors several times, from architecture to history to philosophy. He also studied landscape architecture because of his love for gardening, before settling on literature.
With a degree in hand, Brimner, already wishing for a writing career but being discouraged by his family, decided to teach. He had always loved to play at teaching with younger children. But jobs were scarce because so many young men had elected college over Vietnam service, and Brimner's first jobs were temporary. He most enjoyed his work with first graders, but when an opening in a combination fourth, fifth, and sixth grades class became available, he was moved up. After a stint teaching adolescents in the seventh grade, he nearly quit. He then taught in several other schools before accepting a permanent position teaching high school composition in El Centro, California, where he remained for ten years.
The thrill of seeing his first work (poetry) published gave Brimner the confidence and encouragement to keep submitting. He wrote for magazines and newspapers on a variety of topics, but he soon realized that writing for children was his calling. His stories were featured in such publications as Turtle, Listen, and Jack and Jill, and he published his first children's book just as he began a new teaching job at San Diego State.
That first book was BMX Freestyle. Brimner had been thinking fiction when, upon watching a group of boys performing stunts on their bicycles, he realized that he could transfer his teaching skills to the page and write nonfiction. He followed with a number of other sports-related books, in which he provides histories as well as advice on technique and safety. His many titles about nature include series on geology, insects, and the planets. In addition to presenting factual information, he emphasizes stewardship of the earth and its creatures. Brimner also began to create the picture books he had always wanted to write, most of which deal with situations common to all children and which teach positive behavior, sportsmanship, cooperation, and fair play. These themes are noted in his popular books in the "Rookie Choices" series, which feature three friends who call themselves the Corner Kids. Brimner also instructs children in the technology of The World Wide Web and E-Mail.
The Littlest Wolf is Brimner's prize-winning story for young children about the smallest member of a pack who is unable to keep up with his swifter, stronger littermates. His father, Big Gray, assures the pup that he will match them in time, that time is sometimes all it takes. Bina Williams commented in School Library Journal that "Brimner's gentle and encouraging story will speak to those children who feel less capable or talented than their siblings."
In 1992, Brimner left teaching to become a full-time writer, and in that year, A Migrant Family was published. Because he had taught the children of migrant workers, Brimner was able to factually document how these families live, in a book written for the older child.
With Voices from the Camps: Internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, Brimner provides a history of the Asian population that lived on the West Coast and the events following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, including the relocation of this group and life in the camps. He documents the losses of homes, businesses, civil rights, and pride suffered by the innocent who were persecuted because of racial hysteria.
Angel Island is a history of Chinese and Japanese immigration during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to Angel Island, the West Coast equivalent of Ellis Island. The volume covers how the immigrants were processed and some of the reasons why they came to the United States. Angel Island's administration building was destroyed in a fire, but the island went on to become a holding area for World War II prisoners of war and then a defensive site. It is currently a state park and museum where the carved poems of immigrants remain to document a period of immigration history.
Brimner wrote and edited several titles for "The Lesbian and Gay Experience" series published by Franklin Watts. Being Different: Lambda Youths Speak Out contains narratives by fifteen young people, most between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, who write of their high school experiences, coming out, and sexual identity. Brimner also provides a resource and reading list. Letters to Our Children: Lesbian and Gay Adults Speak to the New Generation is just that, a collection of letters by thoughtful, caring lesbian and gay adults who share their experiences of intolerance and discrimination while growing up. The contributors include an attorney, archbishop, professor, teacher, writer, economist, and psychologist. This volume is written for young people grappling with their sexual identity, but it is also a fine resource for straight youth who wish to understand their gay and lesbian peers.