Scott O'Dell is one of the best-known writers of historical fiction for children from eight to ten through adolescence. His contributions to literature for children would be significant if he had written no other books besides Island of the Blue...

Scott O'Dell penned his first children's book when he was in his early sixties. That book, Island of the Blue Dolphins, was an instant success, winning the prestigious Newbery Medal and launching a new career for O'Dell, who up until that time had...

May 23, 1898. Born on Terminal Island, Los Angeles, California, to May Elizabeth Gabriel and Bennett Mason O'Dell, an official of the Union Pacific Railroad, O'Dell's great-grandmother was a first cousin of the Scottish novelist Sir Walter Scott...

["Child of Fire"] brims with violence as well as cruelty, usually involving animals. It also focuses so narrowly on a few minor and unfortunate aspects of Chicano culture that it would be an exceptionally poor introduction for young readers to that large, vivid ethnic group. The narrator is Delaney, an Anglo (white non-Chicano) juvenile parole officer in San Diego…. Strangely, all of Delaney's charges have Spanish surnames.

Scott O'Dell is a much-honored author, a real general of children's literature who comes with as many medals as a prizewinning Swiss chocolate. Therefore he must be judged by the highest standards as one's expectations are keenly aroused. Alas, they are not fulfilled [with The Captive]. We all understand what is meant by a good bad book. It is a book that is thoroughly reprehensible and lacking in all the higher qualities of literature, such as moral values, philosophy, construction, ch...

Since good story ideas do not come along like streetcars even to master storytellers, it is a happy day when a compelling writer like Scott O'Dell meets a compelling subject like William Tyndale, the sixteenth-century martyr who first translated the Bible into English. An unlikely subject, one may think, for the author of "Island of the Blue Dolphins," "The King's Fifth," and other books set on the Pacific Coast. Yet Mr. O'Dell [in "The Hawk That Dare ...