Jeri Chase Ferris is My Guest Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2013

About the book

 Webster’s American Dictionary is the second most popular book ever printed in English. But who was

that Webster? Noah Webster (1758–1843) was a bookish Connecticut farm boy who became

obsessed with uniting America through language. He spent twenty years writing two thousand pages to

accomplish that, and the first 100 percent American dictionary was published in 1828 when he was

seventy years old. This clever, hilariously illustrated account shines a light on early American history

and the life of a man who could not rest until he’d achieved his dream. An illustrated chronology of

Webster’s life makes this a picture perfect bi-og-ra-phy [noun: a written history of a person's life].

About the author

 JERI CHASE FERRIS is the award-winning author of twelve biographies for children and young adults,

published by Lerner Books and HoughtonMifflin/Harcourt. She specializes in biographies of people

from 1776 to 1936 who overcame difficulties or discrimination or worse, to do great and important

deeds for America. Many of her books are about multicultural heroes who, until recently, have been

sadly omitted from history. Others are about important people you may not know, yet. For example -

Noah Webster! NOAH WEBSTER & HIS WORDS, Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, is an SCBWI

Golden Kite Award winner for best nonfiction book of 2012. Her books have won lots of other awards

too (see www.jerichaseferris.com).