Books with author Deborah Kogan Ray

Earl Douglass was a teenager when he first heard about the Bone Wars—the frenzied race between paleontologists to unearth and classify dinosaur fossils—and he remained fascinated with these prehistoric giants for the rest of his life. As a geologist and botanist working at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Douglass had a hunch that the vast untouched rock strata in northeastern Utah just may have been a haven for Jurassic fossil beds. In 1908, he set out by mule team to the Uinta Basin to dig and discover. Find me “something big,” Andrew Carnegie instructed.Little did Carnegie know exactly how well Douglass would heed those words. Sixteen years and 350 tons of fossils later, Earl Douglass emerged as one of the most prolific and successful dinosaur hunters of his time.Using entries directly from Douglass’s diary along with her own evocative storytelling and artwork, acclaimed author and illustrator Deborah Kogan Ray paints the life of this adventurous bone hunter in memorable detail.

Every Halloween, Hubknuckles pays a visit to Lee and her younger sisters and baby brother. The children watch the ghostly figure from the safety of their warm kitchen, experiencing delicious little tickles of fear.But this year, Lee has decided that Hubknuckles isn’t real. “Hubknuckles is just a sheet and a flashlight,” she tells her sisters. “Either Ma or Pa makes him dance.” And she is determined to prove it. What Lee discovers after an eerie dance on the lawn with her silent, shadowy partner is sure to delight young readers, who will be enchanted by the softly glowing illustrations of this unusual Halloween happening.

Like Judith Hendershot's In Coal Country, Ray's long picture book deals sensitively with miners and their families; this time the narration is in a thick West Virginia hill-country dialect. Allie's father finds an orphaned dog that Allie names ""Trip for his trippin'-up feet.'' When the dog disappears, she is inconsolable. She says, ``When I tell Gramma what the trouble be, she say, `Frettin' won't do no good, darlin'. You got to try to take your mind off Trip.' But I can't. I get to cryin' for missin' him so much.'' After some false starts, Allie finally finds Trip at a nearby home where another little girl has made Trip her own. Allie sympathizes and offers to let the girl visit Trip. She returns home saying, ``I hold so tight to Trip. I don't never want to let him go.'' The emotional story is nicely supported by Ray's evocative black-and-white pencil drawings.

‘Chang and Grandpa Li live in a California Gold Rush town during the 1850s. Chang longs for a pony, for he has only a drawing of one. He tries panning for gold, and later, earning money by sweeping a cabin, he finds gold and is rewarded with the coveted pony. Warm, freely drawn illustrations support Coerr's authentic picture of some of the earliest Chinese immigrants to the U.S." 'K. Children's Books of 1988 (Library of Congress)1988 John and Patricia Beatty Award (California Library Association)