Mary Wirtz Northrup

Background

Mary Northrup was born on the 20th of March, 1952 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States. She is the daughter of Leo B. and Ursula (Kahlhamer) Wirtz.

Education

Mary Northrup attended St. Norbert College, where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Elementary Education in 1974. Also, she studied at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, where she earned a Master of Library and Information Science degree in 1979.

Career

Mary Northrup began her career as a teacher at a Roman Catholic school in Chilton, where she served from 1975 to 1976. After that, in 1979, she joined Johnson Controls, Inc. in Milwaukee, where she served as a librarian until 1982. Between 1992 and 2000, she was a librarian at Mid-Continent Public Library in Gladstone. In 1996, she accepted the post of a reference librarian at Metropolitan Community College-Maple Woods in Kansas City, Missouri.

As the author, Mary Northrup writes for children, teachers, librarians and writers. Her first book, American Computer Pioneers, came out in 1998. Her other publication credits include several chapters in Writing and Publishing: The Librarians' Handbook (2010) and the book Short on Time, Long on Learning (2000). Northrup's most recent book, Pioneering American Computer Geniuses, was published in 2013. She has also written for Writer's Institute Publications, including four editions of Writer's Guide to Current Children's Books, and is a frequent contributor to its annual Children's Writer Guide. She writes reviews for LMC: Library Media Connection and EMRO: Educational Media Reviews Online. Moreover, she serves on the board of the Missouri Center for the Book.

Achievements

• Mary Northrup is an outstanding librarian and well-known author of books, as well as contributor to other books and periodicals. Her articles have appeared in Book Links, Children's Writer and other publications.

Works

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  • Picture Books for Children: Fiction, Folktales and Poetry

    (Providing descriptive annotations of the best children's ...)

    2012
  • Short on Time, Long on Learning: Activities for Those Teachable Moments

    (Transform lost time into found learning with brief, livel...)

    2000
  • American Computer Pioneers

    (This work profiles some of the people, who have made cont...)

    1998
  • Teaching Time-Savers: Short on Time, Long on Learning Activities

    (Every moment has the potential to be a learning moment. U...)

    2002
  • Pioneering American Computer Geniuses

    (It is hard to imagine a world without computers. The peop...)

    2013

Membership

Mary Northrup is a member of the American Library Association, Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators and Beta Phi Mu.

Connections

Mary is mar­ried to Mark A. Northrup. They have two children, a son, Benjamin, and a daughter, Amelia.

Father:

Leo B. Wirtz

Mother:

Ursula (Kahlhamer) Wirtz

husband:

Mark A. Northrup

Son:

Benjamin Northrup

Daughter:

Amelia Northrup