Kate Banks
Katherine Anne Banks was an American children's writer. Her books, The Night Worker, won the 2001 Charlotte Zolotow Award, And If the Moon Could Talk won the 1998 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for best picture book. Dillon Dillon was a finalist for the 2002 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Fiction. Howie Bowles, Secret Agent was nominated for the 2000 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Juvenile. Max’s Math won the 2016 Mathical Book Prize.
Early life
Kate Banks was born on February 13, 1960, in Farmington, Maine. Her father was a history professor at the University of Maine who was killed in a botched robbery in 1979. Banks said that the grief she experienced after her father's murder influenced the themes of her novels.
Career
While a student at Wellesley College, Kate Banks applied for an internship at the Atlantic Monthly Press, where she worked for two years in the children's books department. In 1984, she was hired by editor Frances Foster to work as her assistant at Knopf. Banks worked with Foster for five years before leaving to become a writer, with Foster editing her books for the following couple of decades.
Banks came up with the idea for her first book, Alphabet Soup, while still working with Foster, who encouraged her to write it down and paired the author with Peter Sís, an illustrator looking for work who had just arrived in New York.
Personal life
Banks and her husband, Pierluigi Mezzomo, had two sons. They lived in Italy for several years before moving to France.
Banks lived with several major health issues. She was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome in her twenties and had chronic pain from complications in childbirth. She also had mast cell activation syndrome, which left her unable to pursue treatment for neuroendocrine cancer, which she was diagnosed with in 2022.
Death
Banks died through assisted suicide in Basel, Switzerland, on February 24, 2024, at the age of 64.
Books
Alphabet Soup, Dragonfly Books, 1988Big, Bigger, Biggest Adventure, Random House, 1991The Bunnysitters, Random House, 1991Peter and the Talking Shoes, Knopf, 1994Baboon, Frances Foster Books, 1997Spider Spider, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997And If the Moon Could Talk, Frances Foster Books, 1998The Bird, the Monkey, and the Snake in the Jungle, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999Howie Bowles, Secret Agent, Scholastic, 1999Howie Bowles and Uncle Sam, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000The Night Worker, Frances Foster Books, 2000A Gift from the Sea, Frances Foster Books, 2001Mama’s Little Baby, DK Publishing, 2001Close Your Eyes, Frances Foster Books, 2002Dillon Dillon, Frances Foster Books, 2002The Turtle and the Hippopotamus, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002Mama’s Coming Home, Frances Foster Books, 2003Walk Softly, Rachel, Frances Foster Books, 2003The Cat Who Walked Across France, Frances Foster Books, 2004Friends of the Heart/Amici del Cuore, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005The Great Blue House, Frances Foster Books, 2005Max’s Words, Frances Foster Books, 2006Fox, Frances Foster Books, 2007Lenny’s Space, Frances Foster Books, 2007Max’s Dragon, Frances Foster Books, 2008Monkeys and Dog Days, Frances Foster Books, 2008Monkeys and the Universe, Frances Foster Books, 2009That’s Papa’s Way, Frances Foster Books, 2009What’s Coming for Christmas?, Frances Foster Books, 2009The Eraserheads, Frances Foster Books, 2010Max’s Castle, Frances Foster Books, 2011This Baby illustrated by Gabi Swiatkowska, Frances Foster Books, 2011The Magician's Apprentice, Frances Foster Books, 2012The Bear in the Book, Frances Foster Books, 2012Thank You, Mama illustrated by Gabi Swiatkowska, Frances Foster Books, 2013City Cat, illustrated by Lauren Castillo, Frances Foster Books, 2013Max’s Math, illustrated by Boris Kulikov, Frances Foster Books, 2015Boy's Best Friend, with Rupert Sheldrake, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015How to Find an Elephant, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017