Background
Nancy Shaw was born on April 27, 1946, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States; the daughter of Walter Mark Shaw, a graphic-arts purchasing agent and accountant, and Dorothy L. Shaw, a medical secretary.
500 S State St, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, United States
Nancy Shaw received her Bachelor of Arts with distinction and honors from the University of Michigan.
Massachusetts Hall, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States
Nancy Shaw received her Master of Arts in Teaching from Harvard University.
Nancy Shaw was born on April 27, 1946, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States; the daughter of Walter Mark Shaw, a graphic-arts purchasing agent and accountant, and Dorothy L. Shaw, a medical secretary.
Nancy Shaw received her Bachelor of Arts with distinction and honors from the University of Michigan and her Master of Arts in Teaching from Harvard University.
During college, Shaw worked at the Ann Arbor Public Library, and became interested in Maurice Sendak’s work while shelving children’s books. She went on to write an essay about him that earned her the University of Michigan’s Hopwood Award.
Boring car trip inspired Nancy Shaw's first book, Sheep in a Jeep. She began by reading books on how to write and sell picture books, then gathered publishers’ addresses from Writers’ Market and Literary Marketplace. Two years passed while Shaw sent the book to various publishers, received several rejection notices, and finally found a very good editor at Houghton Mifflin who helped her make the story just a little bit more coherent.
Houghton assigned the Sheep in a Jeep manuscript to illustrator Margot Apple, creating a successful partnership that has continued through each of the later "Sheep" books.
Kids in her Ann Arbor, Michigan, neighborhood help Shaw write books that are challenging but not beyond a child’s comprehension. She often creates a draft of each book, and then she’ll usually send it around to some of her neighbours and let them read it to their younger children and see how well the kids follow it. This technique was especially helpful with Sheep on a Ship, in which Shaw introduced somewhat sophisticated sailing terms.
Shaw often finds herself back in the library, sometimes to read her books to children. She also visits elementary schools. Nancy tells kids about publishing from start to finish and shows them how sloppy a book looks at first. She enjoys showing actual printing materials from various stages of the publishing process, from the first draft to galley. Her audiences especially enjoy seeing a book’s color separations: sheets from the printing press, one for each color, that will combine to create a full-color image.
(The rhyming misadventures of a group of zany sheep on a p...)
1989Nancy Shaw is a member of Authors Guild, Authors League of America, American Association of University Women, Society of Children’s Book Writers, Phi Beta Kappa and Herb Study.
Many authors and artists have influenced Shaw, including Graham Oakley, and James Stevenson for his artwork as well as his whimsy as a writer.
Nancy Shaw married D. Scott Shaw, an engineer, on November 11, 1972. Their marriage produced two children - Allison and Daniel.