Armstrong Sperry Papers

Armstrong W. Sperry was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on November 7, 1897, to Sereno Sperry, a business executive, and his wife, Nettie (Alling) Sperry. As a child he acquired an interest in sea stories from reading Herman Melville, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Jack London, but also from listening to the recollections of his great-grandfather, who had been a mariner in the South Seas. Sperry served in the navy during World War I and studied art at the Yale School of Fine Arts, the Art Students League in New York City, and the Academie Colarossis in Paris. He worked as an advertising illustrator in the early 1920s.

Sperry traveled to Bora Bora, northwest of Tahiti, in 1925 and spent two years learning and admiring the language, culture, and resilient character of the islanders. On his return to New York, Sperry expressed his observations of Bora Bora by writing and illustrating One Day with Manu (1933), one of the first books to portray a foreign culture for American children. He followed the work with similar books describing other indigenous peoples.

Sperry published Call It Courage, a novel about a Polynesian boy facing his fear of the sea, in 1940. He received the Newbery Medal for the book and achieved recognition as a notable children's author and illustrator. Sperry commonly wrote exciting books featuring heroic characters overcoming formidable obstacles in an effort to inspire fortitude in children. In his later work, Sperry produced historical fiction and non-fiction featuring courageous adventurers, explorers, and mariners. He died on April 28, 1976.

Sources:

Major Authors and Illustrators for Children and Young Adults, ed. Laurie Collier and Joyce Nakamura (Detroit: Gale Research, 1993), 5:2185-2188.