Anne-Cath Vestly (1920–2008)

Anne-Cath. Vestly was born Anna Catharina Schulerud in the village of Rena, Norway. She was the daughter of Mentz Oliver Schulerud, a pharmacist and hardware store owner, and his wife Aagot, a schoolteacher. Anna studied in Lillehammer and then moved with her mother to Oslo, where she entered the University of Oslo, attended trade school, and became involved in amateur theater work. In 1946, she married Johan Vestly, with whom she had two sons. Her husband illustrated all her books until his death in 1993. She started her career in children's entertainment performing on the radio and television. Most of her books were first presented as readings on NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting). Her debut book, Ole Aleksander Filibom-bom-bom (1953), eventually developed into a 12-volume series. She challenged traditional gender roles in the Aurora series (1966–1972), depicting a family in which the mother works as a lawyer, while the father, a history Ph.D. candidate, stays at home with the children. Her most famous work, Åtte små, to store og en lastebil (Eight Children and a Truck), the first in a series of nine books, concerns a family with eight children living in a small apartment in Oslo. Several of her award-winning books were also adapted to television and film. She wrote two volumes of autobiography and made her debut as an author of books for adults at age 83.