PENDLETON — The Pendleton Public Library will introduce an award-winning author of more than 70 young people’s books to students in the Pendleton School District.

Deborah Hopkinson, who has penned picture books, historical fiction and nonfiction, will visit each of Pendleton’s fourth grade classrooms on Friday, Feb. 21. She will discuss her book “Apples to Oregon.”

“This is an opportunity for kids to see firsthand that telling stories can be a career path. We hope she will inspire them to tell their own stories and light a fire in our youth for creative writing,” Library Director Jennifer Johnson said.

Hopkinson’s nonfiction works include “Titanic,” “Voices from the Disaster,” which received a YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction honor and a Robert F. Sibert Honor, “Courage & Defiance,” “Stories of Spies, Saboteurs, and Survivors in WWII Denmark,” winner of the OCTE Oregon Spirit Award, and “Shutting out the Sky, Life in the Tenements of New York 1880-1924,” which received an NCTE Orbis Pictus honor.

A native of Massachusetts, Hopkinson received a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Massachusetts and a master’s degree in Asian studies from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. For many years she worked in academic fundraising for institutions, including Whitman College and Oregon State University. She lives with her family and many pets near Portland. She has two grown children and one grandson.

The Pendleton Friends of the Library are sponsoring the author’s visit through a bequest left by Gayle E. Blek, which stipulated funds should be used for reading-related programs and activities serving teens and children. For more information, call Johnson at 541-966-0380.