Armstrong Sperry

Armstrong Wells Sperry (November 7, 1897–April 26, 1976) 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. He is best known for his 1941 Newbery Medal-winning book Call It Courage. Born the third and youngest son of a businessman in New Haven, Sperry attended Stamford Preparatory... more

Armstrong Wells Sperry (November 7, 1897–April 26, 1976) 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. He is best known for his 1941 Newbery Medal-winning book Call It Courage. Born the third and youngest son of a businessman in New Haven, Sperry attended Stamford Preparatory School from 1908 to 1915. His older brother, Paul, invented the sole of the Sperry Top-Sider. He attended the Art Students League of New York from 1915 to 1918, where he studied with F. Luis Mora and George Bellows. He then studied at the Yale School of Art in the fall of 1918 until drafted into the United States Navy at the very end of World War I. Inspired by reading the work of Herman Melville, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Jack London as a boy, and then Frederick O'Brien's White Shadows in the South Seas in 1919, he traveled around the... less