James “Jim” Cross Giblin has died. He was 82 years old.
Throughout his lifetime, Giblin established a long career in publishing. He has become well-known as a highly skilled editor and a children’s books author. He won the National Book Award in 1983 for a nonfiction book entitled Chimney Sweeps.
Dinah Stevenson, the vice president and publisher of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books for Young Readers’ Clarion Books imprint, offered this statement in praise of Giblin: “Jim was the founder of Clarion Books and moved to HMH as publisher when HMH bought Clarion in the late 1970s. After his retirement he continued to work with his established authors, among them Eileen Christelow, the bestselling author of the Five Little Monkeys series; and Mary Downing Hahn, the author of bestselling middle-grade ghost stories…Jim was also an acclaimed author of nonfiction for young readers and wrote several impressive biographies for Clarion, including The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, which won the Sibert Award for Most Distinguished Informational Work for Children.”