Maia Wojciechowska


Maia Teresa Wojciechowska was a Polish-American writer best known for children's and young adult fiction. Her first book and two books for adults were published under her married name Maia Rodman.

Life

Wojciechowska was born in Warsaw, Poland, and was schooled in Poland, France, and England. After the 1939 invasion of Poland, the family fled to France, where she attended dozens of schools. They moved to California, USA, in 1942.
Wojciechowska married Selden Rodman in 1950 and they had one daughter, Oriana. They divorced in 1957, as did she and her second husband Richard Larkin, who were married between 1970 and 1981. For some time in the 1980s–90s she lived in New Jersey with her adopted daughter Leonara.
A resident of Mahwah, New Jersey, Wojciechowska died of a stroke at age 74 in Long Branch, New Jersey.

Awards

In 1965, her book Shadow of a Bull, features a Spanish boy destined to be a bullfighter. It won the 1965 Newbery Medal recognizing the year's best contribution to American children's literature. Its German-language edition won the Deutscher Jugendbuchpreis for youth books in 1968.

Selected works