Miriam Roth (1910–2005)

Miriam Roth was born to a Jewish family in the town of Érsekújvár, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (present-day Nové Zámky, Slovakia). Her parents were Helén (Hella) and Jenő (Yaakov) Roth. Her father, who had fought in World War I, was the principal of the town's Jewish elementary school. She studied psychology and earned a bachelor's degree in pedagogy and natural sciences at Masaryk University in Czechoslovakia.
She was a leading member of the Hashomer Hatzair Zionist youth movement from an early age. In 1931, Roth immigrated without her family to the British Mandate of Palestine. There she studied at the Seminar HaKibbutzim Teachers College in Tel Aviv, and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 1937, Roth became one of the founders of Kibbutz Sha'ar HaGolan, where she initially worked as a kindergarten teacher.
During the Holocaust in World War II, her parents, two sisters, and two young nieces who were still in Europe were sent to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz and murdered.
In 1960, Roth went to New York City to study at the Bank Street College of Education. She later earned a master's degree in education from Columbia University Teachers' College and another MA in pedagogy from City College of New York. Roth was married to Pesach Ivry, another immigrant from near her hometown, with whom she had three sons. She taught preschool education and children's literature to kindergarten teachers at the Oranim Academic College in northern Israel until age 70, and trained teachers and taught children's literature at Seminar Hakibbutzim. She also wrote textbooks on kindergarten education, and lectured and published widely on education and on children's literature.
She published The Preschool Method (1955), The Theory of the Kindergarten (1956), The Child and You (1958), and Literature for the Very Young (1969), among other works. She often said that parenting was a profession that must be taught.

Later in life, Roth also began writing books for children, many of which became bestsellers and classics in Israel, as well as six books on education and children's literature. The first of her 23 children's books, A Tale of Five Balloons, appeared in 1974, when she was 61 years old. She was a pioneer in creating a new literary genre focused on children's emotions and experiences, instead of on collective themes.

Roth received the Ze'ev Prize for Lifetime Achievement in 1990, the UNICEF Smile Award in 1998, and the Bialik Prize in 2002.