Plum Grove, Prairie Rose, Possum Hollow, Good Intent, and Apple Pie-for 250 years one-room schools with names like these existed across America. Blessed with remoteness, small size, and simplicity, most of them offered not only a safe place to learn, but also a family-like setting and an education rooted in community. Ray Bial's camera eloquently captures the wistful-looking little buildings of logs, sod, wood, or stone, and his narrative, spiced with quotes from the teachers and students who spent so much time there, brings to life both the charm and hardships of our rural schools. As readers imagine a school without buses and computers, hot lunch programs and gymnasiums, they will also marvel at these students' determination to learn in a single room, poorly-heated and simply furnished with puncheon benches and slate pencils.
Raymond Bial (pronounced Beal) is the author and photo-illustrator of more than one hundred critically-acclaimed books for children and adults, including Amish Home, Frontier Home, The Underground Railroad, Where Lincoln Walked, One-Room School, Ghost Towns of the American West, Tenement: Immigrant Life on the Lower East Side, Nauvoo: Mormon City on the Mississippi River, The Super Soybean, and many others. A skilled photographer, he works with ease in both color and in black and white. Working with both film cameras and digital equipment, he is best known for his versatility in portraiture, landscapes, and still lifes, and his sensitivity toward the people, places, and objects portrayed in his images.
The subjects of Raymond's books range from farm life to American social and cultural history. Appealing to young and old alike, his books are ideal choices for parents, grandparents, teachers, and librarians to share with children. His most recent photo-essays are Ellis Island: Coming to the Land of Liberty, and Nauvoo: Mormon City on the Mississippi River, published by Houghton-Mifflin, and The Super Soybean, published by Albert Whitman. He has also written three popular collections of mystery fiction for children: The Fresh Grave and Other Ghostly Stories, The Ghost of Honeymoon Creek, and most recently Shadow Island: A Tale of Lake Superior, published by Bluehorse Books. His books have received numerous awards from the American Library Association, National Council of Teachers of English, Children's Book Council, and many other organizations. He lives with his wife, Linda, and children, Sarah and Luke, in Urbana, Illinois. His daughter Anna, who illustrated two of Raymond's books, is a fashion designer in New York City.
