SOURCE CITATION
"William Ivan Martin." Major Authors and Illustrators for Children and Young Adults, 2nd ed., 8 vols. Gale Group, 2002. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007.

BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Known to elementary school teachers as Bill Martin, Jr., William Ivan Martin is the creator of numerous series of children's books. In his works, Martin once commented, he sets out to satisfy "children's appetite for language and their quest for meaning in whatever print they encounter." He encourages children to read better, faster, and more enjoyably by "giving them," Martin continued, "highly predictable stories for beginning readers." In addition to freelancing as an author and editor, Martin also works as a storyteller, folk singer, and lecturer; he travels extensively, conducting programs in which he conveys to both teachers and students the joy and importance of reading.

Growing up in Hobarth, Kansas, Martin lacked reading skills as a young boy. He was subsequently forced "to go the route of the 'hearing ear' to learning," Martin revealed in the Claremont Reading Conference Yearbook. "Oh, I could read a sentence--but never fifteen connected sentences through which an idea or a concept emerged." Martin attests that a major source of comfort during his childhood was his storytelling grandmother. "She was a robust, sod-busting woman . . . who threaded the family history into story form to the continuous delight of the Martin children," Martin related to Nancy Larrick in Language Arts.

Despite Martin's poor reading ability, he managed to proceed through school with the help of several extraordinary teachers. He particularly admired his fifth-grade teacher, who enriched his education by reading aloud to the class twice daily. This practice, according to Martin in the Claremont Reading Conference Yearbook, "neutralized me of the worldly confusions I brought into the classroom (and) depressurized me of the day's accumulation of scholastic anxieties."

Other teachers made an impression on Martin, including a high school drama teacher who introduced him to the plays of William Shakespeare. Still suffering from limited reading capabilities, Martin relished the spoken nature of drama. "People always ask: But how did you manage through high school and college without the reading skills?," Martin commented in the Claremont Reading Conference Yearbook, adding that "the times were in my favor. In those days, education was more genial, more respectful, more humble. We students had more of a chance to speak from our uniqueness than students do today, without being narrowly or arrogantly measured at every turn by test scores."

While he had difficulty reading, Martin nevertheless loved books. Admitted to the Kansas State Teachers College of Emporia without having to take a reading test, he was elated when he finally read a book from cover to cover during his freshman composition class. "It was a laborious but glorious undertaking," noted Martin in the Claremont Reading Conference Yearbook. Under the rigorous instruction of a college teacher, Martin improved his ability to read and write. Martin maintained later: "Through it all and even today, I have never lost touch with (certain of my teachers') sensitivity. . . . They imprinted in my memory models of how a sentence runs its fluent course and carries with it an awareness of literary completeness."

After graduation Martin taught high school journalism, English, and drama, before serving in World War II in the U.S. Air Force as a newspaper editor. During this time he wrote his first children's book, The Little Squeegy Bug, illustrated by his brother Bernard. Its sales were meager until Martin personally visited bookstores and drugstores with the book, causing sales to increase considerably. And when First Lady of the United States Eleanor Roosevelt mentioned The Little Squeegy Bug on the radio, book sales rose to more than half a million copies.

Martin and his brother continued collaborating on children's books; as a result, Martin's interest in children's learning and reading habits grew. He attended graduate school in education at Northwestern University and, while working on his M.A. and Ph.D., became principal of the Crow Island Elementary School in Winnetka, Illinois. "My years at Crow Island were the best learning years of my life," Martin told Larrick. As an educator, he realized the significance of a child's first reading experience. "On the very first day of first grade," the author told Charlotte Cox in Curriculum Review, "the child should have some sort of 'whole book success'--the feeling of exhilaration that comes with the completion of an entire little book, even if it has only the smallest vocabulary--and be able to say, 'I did it! It was fun! Can I have another?'"

In 1960 Martin joined the publishing house of Holt, Rinehart & Winston, not only as editor but as creator of materials for elementary classrooms. During the late 1960s and 1970s he developed several reading series intended to help children learn to read and enjoy it. The "Sounds of Language" program was designed to help students from kindergarten through eighth grade relate sounds to the printed word.

Larrick described how Martin's books function: "Typographically, Bill Martin's books demonstrate his conviction that language works in chunks of meanings and should be so presented to beginning readers. The jagged right margin of his books comes from breaking each line where there is a break in meaning, a break in rhythm. Thus the young reader learns from the beginning to focus on clusters of words which sing together and give meaning together."

Despite the popularity of his approach to teaching reading, Martin sometimes encounters a teacher who does not agree with his technique. "I believe that the way to teach is to trust students to respond," Martin disclosed to Jean F. Mercier in Publishers Weekly. "I had to convince (a doubting teacher) that whether the kids understood the word was unimportant, so long as they could assimilate the sounds, the music, the poet's vision."

In addition to his "Sounds of Language" books, Martin created the "Owl Books," four libraries totaling more than one hundred books ("Kin/Der Owl Books," "Little Owl Books," "Wise Owl Books," and "Young Owl Books"). These works instruct children in social studies, science, literature, and arithmetic. Also, the "Bill Martin Instant Readers" series helps children expand their language and literature experience by encouraging them to read aloud. And the "Bill Martin Freedom Books" series teaches children the dynamics of democracy. In his interview with Cox, Martin stressed the importance of providing a variety of printed material to hold the interest of young readers: "We must find ways for the reluctant or nonreader to discover in print life-supporting reasons to read, whether it's in the sports pages, movie reviews, pictorial magazines, specialty publications, or whatever."

In 1967 Martin left the Holt publishing company to pursue a freelance writing and editing career. He also lectures around the United States, inviting veteran teachers to regain their enthusiasm for teaching. "I think writing makes you a better writer, and reading makes you a better reader, and probably driving a truck makes you a better truck driver," Martin related in the English Journal, "but I think there is a point at which teaching does not make you a better teacher." Martin continued, "The trouble with many of us teachers is that we begin as professionals: questioning the assumptions, looking for theoretical support, and developing new ways to accomplish our goals. Soon, however, we become so good at the routine and predictable aspects of our jobs that we sink comfortably into reliance on our craft: perfecting our act, but not rethinking our role." Martin suggests that in order for teachers to improve, they must assume the role of a student. "By becoming students again we can come to realize more clearly than any stack of books could tell us what a good student is and what makes someone a good student. . . . By continuing to be students . . . we will gain wisdom about learning and education and teaching. We are students. We can't help it. If we become better students, we will become better teachers."

In the 1990s Martin made some important changes in his life. He teamed up with a new writing partner, Michael Sampson, a friend of many years. And in 1993, after living in New York for thirty years, he moved to a twenty-three-acre community in the east Texas woods near Commerce. Dubbed "Woodfrost" by Martin, the community is now home to Martin, Sampson, and others of their friends.

In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Martin explained how he and Sampson collaborate on their books: "We work together face-to-face. Our houses are 100 yards apart--across a lake from one another. We write together at my kitchen table, with pencil and paper. We are a good team because I am auditory and Michael is visual. I have to hear the language and Michael has to see it. Out contributions to a manuscript are about 50/50. We do not mind disagreeing about the way a line sounds, and keep at it until we are both satisfied. Some manuscripts go through fifty drafts before we are finished."

The books that Martin and Sampson have collaborated on include Swish, Adam, Adam, What Do You See?, Rock It, Sock It, Number Line, as well as a new edition of the book that started it all--The Little Squeegy Bug. As Martin explained for BookPage, with this book, his "life has come full circle." Thanks to that plug from first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin reminisced, "the book took off and so did my career as an author. Since then, I have written more than 300 books, but none have been as memorable as the first." For this new edition, Martin and Sampson cut the original text by fifty percent, pruning what had been "over-told" and making more room for art in the picture-book format of the new edition. Since the original illustrator, Martin's brother Bernard, was deceased and his artwork lost, Pat Corrigan was chosen as the new illustrator. "Pat's delightful illustrations have made the little firefly soar again," Martin declared, "and the spectacular printing job makes the little bug shine as he never did before."

UPDATES
August 11, 2004: Martin died on August 11, 2004, at his home in Commerce, Texas. He was 88. Source: New York Times, www.nytimes.com, August 16, 2004.

PERSONAL INFORMATION
Born March 20, 1916, in Hiawatha, KS; son of William and Iva June (Lilly) Martin; married Betty Jeanne Buchmann, 1942 (divorced, 1979); children: Gary (deceased), Danielle. Education: Kansas State Teachers College (now Emporia State University), B.S., 1934; Northwestern University, M.A., 1957, Ph.D., 1961. Addresses: Homeoff--Commerce, TX. Agent--c/o Henry Holt & Co., 115 West 18th St., New York, NY 10011.

CAREER
Children's author, 1945--. High school journalism, dramatics, and English teacher in St. John and Newton, KS, 1934-41; Crow Island Elementary School, Winnetka, IL, principal, 1955-61; Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc., New York, NY, editor and children's textbook and picture book series creator, 1960-67; freelance writer, editor, and lecturer, 1967--. Producer of video and tape recordings; creator of television series The Storyteller. Visiting professor at universities and colleges throughout the United States. Military service: U.S. Air Force; served as newspaper editor, 1942-45.