This year, we're honoring the classic literature of our favorite authors. What better way to do that than by celebrating each of their birthdays? Every month on the Prestwick House Blog, you'll find free literary resources — including crossword puzzles, posters, lesson plans, eBooks, How to Teach resource guides, and more — to commemorate the dates of birth for our famous authors. Share the never-to-be-forgotten works of iconic writers with your students and make use of these resources in your classroom this (and every) June.

Rick Riordan

June 5, 1964

While working as a middle school English and history teacher, Rick Riordan began writing the Tres Navarre mystery novels for adults. This series won multiple awards, but Riordan's writing career truly took off with the publication of The Lightning Thief, which he had started as a bedtime story for his son. Riordan's Percy Jackson & the Olympians series has been adapted into film, and Riordan continues to enchant young readers with series based on Greek, Egyptian, and Norse mythology.

Anne Frank

June 12, 1929

One of the most well-known Jewish victims of the Holocaust, Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. As Hitler's power grew and anti-Semitism increased, Anne Frank relocated to the Netherlands with her parents and sister. When German troops invaded the Netherlands in 1940, the Frank family went into hiding and Anne Frank recorded the struggles and events she experienced while living in a cramped secret annex for two years. When the hiding place was discovered, Anne Frank was sent to a concentration camp where she died of starvation and disease. Her father, Otto Frank, the sole survivor of the family, returned to the annex after the war and discovered her diary, which he decided to publish in accordance to her wishes.

Markus Zusak

June 23, 1975

The youngest child of German and Austrian immigrants, Markus Zusak grew up in Sydney, Australia. Inspired in part by his parent's experiences of living in Nazi controlled Europe, Zusak wrote The Book Thief. This famous novel about a girl in Nazi Germany has spent 375 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and has been translated into over thirty languages. Zusak still lives in Australia with his wife and two children.

George Orwell

June 25, 1903

Born Eric Arthur Blair but better known by his pen name, George Orwell was raised in England by his mother while his father worked in India, then still a British colony. After stints working as an imperial police officer in Burma, living in poverty in Britain, and France, and fighting alongside the Worker's Party of Marxist Unification in the Spanish Civil War, Orwell wrote primarily as a journalist, essayist, and critic. He is most well known, however, for his allegorical novel, Animal Farm, and dystopian work, 1984. Orwell died of tuberculosis on January 21, 1950.

Yann Martel

June 25, 1963

Born in Spain of Canadian parents, Yann Martel moved around a lot as a child, living in Spain, Canada, France, Costa Rica, Portugal, and Mexico. As an adult, he continued his nomadic lifestyle by traveling in Mexico, South America, Iran, Turkey, and India. Martel started his writing career by publishing short stories, but it wasn't until the publication of Life of Pi, a survival story with spiritual themes, that Martel became a prominent, award-winning author. Martel lives in Saskatchewan with his wife and son.