Ellen Levine is the author of many books, including Henry's Freedom Box, a Caldecott Honor book, and Darkness Over Denmark, which was a National Jewish Book Award finalist and was awarded the Trudi Birger Jerusalem International Book Fair Prize. Her book Freedom's Children won the Jane Addams book award and was named one of the Ten Best Children’s Books of the Year by the New York Times. Levine's novel, In Trouble, takes place in pre-Roe v. Wade America, and was just named to the 2012 Amelia Bloomer List of Recommended Books with Significant Feminist Content for Young People 0-18. Her earlier novel with some of the same characters, Catch A Tiger By The Toe, examines the impact of McCarthyism on private lives. Levine is a woodcarver and a lapsed civil-rights lawyer, and she taught at Vermont College’s Master of Fine Art in Writing for Children and Young Adults program.
I’ve written more than twenty books, but was startled by what I learned: you can raise the possibility of abortion, but it must be rejected. I hit a wall of resistance I believe is self-censorship on the part of the publishers. When a character is pregnant, whether from rape, incest, etc., so long as a baby is born, that’s acceptable. The “Juno” scenario.
