JOHANNA REISS

BIOGRAPHY I BOOKS I PRESENTATIONS I BOOK ORDERING

Johanna Reiss was born and brought up in Holland.

After she graduated from college, she taught elementary

school for several years before coming to the United States

to live.

Her first book for children, The Upstairs Room, which was

autobiographical, was a 1973 Newbery Honor Book, an American Library Association Notable Children's Book, a Jane Addams Peace Association Honor Book, a New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year, a School Library Journal Best Book, and it won the

Jewish Book Council Juvenile Book Award and the Buxtehuder Bulle, a prestigious German children's book award. The Upstairs Room is about the author's own experiences during World War II, when she and her sister, Sini, were forced to hide in a cold, drab room of a Gentile family's farmhouse in order to avoid being captured by the Nazis, who were, in fact, often just a few feet away from them.

Mrs. Reiss writes that soon after she had finished The Upstairs Room, she

found "there was still something I wanted to say, something that was as meaningful to me as the story I had told in the first book, the story of a war. `The fighting has stopped. Peace treaty signed,' newspapers announce at the conclusion of every war. From a political point of view, the war is over, but in another sense it has not really ended. People are fragile. They are strong, too, but wars leave emotional scars that take a long time to heal, generations perhaps. I know this to be true of myself, and of others. And out of those feelings came The Journey Back, a story of the aftermath of the Second World War."

In 2006, The Upstairs Room celebrated 35 years in print. In 2008, her new book, A Hidden Life, written for adults is scheduled to be published. Related to The Upstairs Room, it is nevertheless an entirely different kind of story. A description can be found under her list of books.

Mrs. Reiss lives in New York City within subway distance from her daughters, her grandchildren and their pet frog. She dedicates a good deal of time to going around the country, talking to students about her experiences and the very personal way that history touches the lives of everyday people.