William H. Armstrong (1911-1999)

William H. Armstrong was born September 14, 1911 near Lexington, Virginia. He graduated from Hampden-Sydney College in 1936. He became history master at Kent School in Kent, Connecticut where he taught for 52 years. He published his first book, a study guide called Study is Hard Work in 1956. Over the next few years he published other books about learning like 87 ways to Help Your Child in School (1961), Tools of Thinking (1968), and Word Power in 5 Easy Lessons (1969). Then in 1969 he published the novel Sounder about a African-American sharecropper family in Virginia. Sounder was awarded the Newbery Medal in 1970. He wrote two sequels to Sounder - Sour Land (1971) and The MacLeod Place (1972).