Making a Difference: The Story of an American Family

by Margaret Hodges, ALC Staff (Editor)

Traces the lives and accomplishments of the extraordinary Mary Sherwood and her five children who played an important part in bringing great changes in higher education and voting rights for women, opportunities for government service, and awareness of the need to preserve the country's natural wonders.A group portrait of a family of achievers offers an intriguing account of Mary Sherwood, a young widow, and her five talented children, who made their individual marks as scholars, innovators, and servants of humankind

208 pages, Paperback

First published May 5, 1989

About the author

Margaret "Peggy" Hodges was an American writer of books for children.

She was born Sarah Margaret Moore in Indianapolis, Indiana to Arthur Carlisle and Annie Marie Moore. She enrolled at Tudor Hall, a college preparatory school for girls. A 1932 graduate of Vassar College, she arrived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with her husband Fletcher Hodges Jr. when in 1937 he became curator at the Stephen Foster Memorial. She trained as a librarian at Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University, under Elizabeth Nesbitt, and she volunteered as a storyteller at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Beginning in 1958 with One Little Drum, she wrote and published more than 40 books.

Her 1985 book Saint George and the Dragon, illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman, won the Caldecott Medal of the American Library Association.

She was a professor of library science at the University of Pittsburgh, where she retired in 1976.

Hodges died of heart disease on December 13, 2005 at her home in Oakmont, Pennsylvania. She suffered from Parkinson's disease.

She wrote her stories on a notepad or a typewriter. "I need good ideas, and they don't come out of machines," she once said.

Reviews

[Kerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a true story of the Sherwood family-Mary Beattie Sherwood and her five children, in the early part of the twentieth century. Mary Sherwood was widowed, and strove to raise her children on a very small income. Mary taught her children a love of books, and that life was full of boundless possibilities. It was this belief that made the Sherwoods an exceptional family, who were on intimate terms with Franklin D. Roosevelt and family. This was an extremely inspirational book. I found Mary Sherwood to be an admirable woman and also her children, who followed in her footsteps. This helped to reinforce the ideals of believing in yourself and working hard to achieve your goals.

[Maureen Milton · Rating 4 out of 5]

We started this book as a family while we were on Vashon Island this August, where Al & the kids would settle in at night and draw while I read. We've read one or two nights more since then, but the story of the family, raised almost entirely by the formidable Mary Sherwood on a modest income, and their remarkable accomplishments in the late 19th & early 20th centuries is highly inspiring.