She returned to Mississippi County again in 1954 to learn of the “river rats” who grew up on the Mississippi River. Lenski’s fondness for the children of Arkansas continued in two more books about rural northeast Arkansas. The tales of a tractor accident, a furniture fire, and a one-armed hot tamale vendor are all true to the Blytheville area. The book centers upon Joanda and family, who share in a hardscrabble life of near poverty controlled by the weather and the cotton industry. Afterward, she inscribed in Cotton in My Sack, the book inspired by this visit, “for my beloved Arkansas cotton children.”Ĭotton in My Sack (Lippincott, 1949) portrays life among the sharecroppers, tenants, and farmers in cotton country the 1940s. She visited during the spring and fall of 1947, likely staying for a month or two at a hotel in Blytheville (Mississippi County). Lenski’s children’s books, poetry, and songbooks were printed by a number of publishers, including Harper, Oxford University Press, Lippincott, and Walck.Īfter students in Miss Minnie Foster’s classes in the community of Yarbro (Mississippi County) heard Lenski read one of her books on the radio, they invited her to visit northeast Arkansas.
With Bayou Suzette in 1943, Lenski began her “regional series,” a collection of children’s books describing mostly rural settings across America. Her first book, Skipping Village, debuted in 1927. A publisher’s suggestion that she write her own stories launched Lenski’s vocation as a writer/illustrator.
Lenski spent much of her early career illustrating children’s books for other authors. Their only child, Stephen, was born in 1929. Upon her return from England in 1921, Lenski married her former art instructor, Arthur Covey and became a stepmother to his two children. After graduating from Ohio State University in 1915 with a BS in education and a teaching certificate, Lenski studied at the Arts Students League in New York City and the Westminster School of Art in London, England. Lenski attended grade school in Anna, Ohio, and rode a train each day to Sidney, Ohio, to attend high school. Her father, Richard, was a Prussian immigrant and a Lutheran clergyman her mother, Marietta, was a schoolteacher. Lois Lenski was born the fourth of five children in Springfield, Ohio, on October 14, 1893. She visited parts of Mississippi County while researching her three books about Arkansas children: Cotton in My Sack, Houseboat Girl, and We Live by the River. Lois Lenski wrote and illustrated children’s books throughout her career of more than fifty years.
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