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Arthur Bowie Chrisman

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Arthur Bowie Chrisman was born near White Post, Virginia. He grew up on a farm and was educated in a one-room school. He loved nature and the outdoors, and he loved composing and telling stories. He studied electrical engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute from 1906 to 1908, leaving at the end of his first year. He began writing when he was around 18 years old, but for many years had trouble selling his work. He held a variety of jobs to support himself, including teacher, farmer, draftsman, and movie extra. He spent several years in California, and while he was there he befriended a Chinese shopkeeper who shared many Chinese folktales. He chose sixteen of these and published them as Shen of the Sea: Chinese Stories for Children (1925), which received the Newbery Medal in 1926. His other works included The Wind That Wouldn't Blow: Stories of the Merry Middle Kingdom for Children, and Myself (1927), Clarke County, 1836–1936 (1936), and Treasures Long Hidden: Old Tales and New Tales of the East (1941). Chrisman suffered from respiratory problems and moved to Arkansas in about 1943. In his later years he became reclusive and seldom left his one-room cabin in Shirley, Arkansas. Two local men discovered his body on February 21, 1953 after Chrisman missed one of his regular grocery-buying trips into Clinton. The Van Buren County coroner estimated that he had been dead for about a week.