Cancer claims life of
Sid Fleischman, 90

Sid Fleischman, the Newbery Award-winning author of The Whipping Boy and member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, died March 17, 2010, at home, the day following his 90th birthday, according to The Los Angeles Times' Web site.

Fleischman said he was surprised he grew up to be a writer. "I had a childhood much like everyone else's," he wrote in his autobiography, The Abracadabra Kid: A Writer's Life. "What went wrong?"

His biography page on his Web site, www.sidfleischman.com, provides a glimpse into his life, noting his childhood was not a typical one. He was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and he grew up in San Diego, Calif., during the Great Depression. In the fifth grade, he decided to become a magician. Just out of high school, he traveled widely in vaudeville and with a midnight ghost-and-goblin show.
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Despite his involvement in vaudeville and magic, Fleischman would write, "I was on the way to becoming a writer. I just didn't know it."

After serving in the U.S. Naval Reserve during wartime, he finished college at San Diego State University and worked as a reporter on the San Diego Daily Journal. When the newspaper ceased publishing in 1950, Fleischman turned his attention to fiction writing. One of Fleischman's novels was bought for a major motion picture, and he was offered a contract to write the screenplay. However, according to the L.A. Times, his first book was a collection of magic tricks he had created. He was 19 at the time.

As for what prompted the magician/journalist/author to write children's books, he said his own children led him into it.

“They didn't understand what I did for a living,” he said. “Other fathers, they learned, left home in the morning and returned at the end of the day. I was always around the house. I decided to clear up the mystery and wrote a book just for them."

Fleischman wrote nearly sixty books, and some of them were turned into movies. He is the father of Newbery Medal winning writer and poet Paul Fleischman, author of Joyful Noise, they are the only father and son to receive Newbery awards.

Fleischman was a founding member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators and had been on its board of advisors since its inception in 1972, according to the L.A. Times. In 2003, the organization named an award for him that honors humorous writing for children.

"Humor is the oxygen of children's literature," he told the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch in 1997. "There's a lot of competition for children's time, but even kids who hate to read want to read a funny book."

He was preceded in death by his wife, Betty, who died in 1993. In addition to his son, also surviving are two daughters, Jane Fleischman and Anne Fleischman Miller; a sister, Arleen Kornet; and four grandchildren.

Sources: www.latimes.com and www.sidfleischman.com