Biography of armstrong perry

Armstrong Wells Sperry November 7, — April 26, was an American writer and illustrator of children's literature. His books include historical fiction and biography , often set on sailing ships , and stories of boys from Polynesia , Asia and indigenous American cultures. Born the third and youngest son of a businessman in New Haven, Sperry attended Stamford Preparatory School from to His older brother Paul A.

Sperry invented what became the first boat shoe , the Sperry Top-Sider.

Armstrong Wells Sperry (November

Luis Mora and George Bellows. Returning to New York in , he worked in an advertising agency, "drawing vacuum cleaners, milk bottles, Campbell's Soup, etc. He started writing his own adventure stories with tales of the South Seas that were syndicated by Metropolitan. He married Margaret Robertson, a medical doctor and daughter of San Francisco bookseller and publisher A.

Robertson, in , whom he had met on his trip to Hawaii in Sperry's first book, One Day with Manu, a colorfully illustrated tale of everyday life in Bora Bora, appeared in Critic Joan McGrath, cautions modern readers to take his depictions of other cultures in context, stating,. Coloured as they were by the prevailing attitudes of his day, Sperry's ethnological works for young readers would by critics of today be stigmatized as condescending in their approach: it is all too easy to lose the historical perspective that would credit him with enlightenment and objectivity, given their date of publication.

Sperry's great-grandfather was a sea captain, inspiring his love of the ocean and his book All Sail Set about the clipper ship Flying Cloud , which won him a Newbery Honor Book award in Although established as a writer, Sperry continued to illustrate dustjackets for other well-known authors of young adult fiction of his era, including Howard Pease , Agnes D.

Means, and Hildegarde Hawthorne, as well as illustrating various basal readers for the Ginn Co.