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Jane Kurtz (born April 17, 1952) is an award-winning American writer of more than thirty picture books, middle-grade novels, nonfiction, ready-to-reads, and books for educators. A member of the faculty of the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in children’s and adult literature, Kurtz is an international advocate for literacy and writing. She was also part of a small group of volunteers who organized the not-for-profit organization, Ethiopia Reads, which has established more than seventy libraries for children, published books, and built four schools in rural Ethiopia. == Early life == Kurtz was born in Portland, Oregon, to missionary parents, who moved the family to Ethiopia when she was two years old. Her parents, the Rev. Harold and Polly Kurtz, worked for the Presbyterian Church in Ethiopia for twenty-three years. After two years of language study in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, her parents moved their four children to Maji, Ethiopia in the far southwest of the country. The journey up to Maji—usually in a Jeep—took all day to drive thirty-two miles. Sometimes the family traveled by mule, a two-day trip. Maji, which was at an 8000-foot altitude, was where Jane first learned to read as Polly Kurtz homeschooled Kurtz and her sisters. The family spent one year in Boise, Idaho when Kurtz was in second grade. After returning to Ethiopia, Kurtz was home schooled for one additional year before leaving Maji to attend fourth grade at Good Shepherd boarding school in Addis Ababa. Except for spending her eighth-grade year in Pasadena, California, she would remain at Good Shepherd through her junior year of high school. One of her middle-grade novels, ''Jakarta Missing'' (Greenwillow/HarperCollins), is the fictional story of what it was like to leave East Africa to spend a teenaged year in the United States. Following in her parents' footsteps, Kurtz was admitted to Monmouth College (Illinois) after her junior year of high school and graduated in 1973 as a psychology major. During graduation ceremonies, she was involved in a crash of a small plane piloted by her father, while visiting her family in Ethiopa. She spent about six months in a body cast before beginning her work life. In Carbondale, Illinois, she worked at the Carbondale New School, a private alternative school for students in kindergarten through sixth grade, first as a writing teacher, next as director, and finally teaching a combined class of third- and fourth-graders. When her husband, Leonard Goering, accepted a position in Trinidad, Colorado, she spent five years teaching English at Trinidad Catholic High School. She also served as the director of a not-for-profit organization, Trinidad Downtown Area Development and was a member of the Colorado Council on the Arts before moving to Grand Forks, North Dakota, where she completed her master’s degree in English and taught as a senior lecturer in the English department. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Jane Kurtz」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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