Amber Was Brave, Essie Was Smart

Vera Baker Williams was born on January 28, 1927 in Hollywood, California. She studied at the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan and Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where she received a BFA in graphic arts. She co-found the Gate Hill Cooperative and the Collaberg School, in Stony Point, New York.

She worked as a teacher and artist before becoming a writer and illustrator of children's books. She won a Caldecott Medal award and the Boston Globe-Horn Book award in the picture book category in 1983 for A Chair for My Mother, a Caldecott Medal award in 1991 for "More More More" Said the Baby: Three Love Stories, the Boston Globe-Horn Book award in fiction in 1994 for Scooter, and the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature in 2009.

She was a member of the executive committee of the War Resisters League from 1984 to 1987, and served a month at a federal penitentiary for participating in a women's peaceful blockade of the Pentagon. She died on October 16, 2015 at the age of 88.

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