After a successful career as a microbiologist, Harriette Gillem Robinet of Oak Park became a widely admired author of historical novels for readers ages 9-14 and other books, all the while maintaining a strong commitment to civil rights. Among her 12 books were “Missing from Haymarket Square,” which was set during a struggle for fair labor practices in 1886 Chicago, and “Forty Acres and Maybe a Mule,” about a 12-year-old orphaned slave who leaves South Carolina in search of a Freedmen’s Bureau during Reconstruction. Ms.
Robinet died on May 17. She was 92. Ms.
Robinet was a longtime member of the Society of Midland Authors and won the organization’s 1998 Children’s Fiction Award for “The Twins: The Pirates and the Battle of New Orleans” (Atheneum Books, 1997). She was a judge for the group’s book awards in 2012. Among her other awards were the Carl Sandburg Award, the Scott O’Dell Award for children’s historical fiction, the Jane Addams Award, the Friends of American Writers Award and the Chicago Literature Hall of Fame’s Fuller Award.
Her book “Walking to the Bus Rider Blues” was nominated for an Edgar Award by Mystery Writers of America. She was also a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America and the National Writers Union. “To me, Harriette turned writing for children on its head,” said Marlene Targ Brill, also an author of children’s books.
“She took what used to .