Valerie Worth
American poet and children's writer (1933–1994)
Valerie Worth Bahlke (October 29, 1933 – July 31, 1994) was an American poet and writer of children's books under her maiden name, Valerie Worth.
Biography
Valerie Worth was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and grew up in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, where her father taught biology at Swarthmore College. In 1947, the family moved to Tampa, Florida for four years, and then spent a year in Bangalore, India. Worth returned to Swarthmore for college, where in 1955 she received an English Degree with High Honors. Shortly after graduation, she married George Bahlke. After a few peripatetic years, the couple eventually settled in Clinton, New York, where her husband taught at Kirkland College. At an informal writers group, Worth met Natalie Babbitt, whose husband, Samuel Fisher Babbitt, was the president of the university. Babbitt had published a few books at the time and recommended Worth's poems to her editor, Michael di Capua at Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Small Poems, Worth's first published collection, came out in 1972 accompanied by pen and ink illustrations by Babbitt; Babbitt also illustrated her subsequent volumes of "Small Poems", More Small Poems, Still More Small Poems, All the Small Poems, and All the Small Poems and Fourteen More. At Christmastime, a collection published in 1992, was illustrated by Antonio Frasconi and published by Michael Di Capua Books.
The public source identifies “Valerie Worth” as american poet and children's writer (1933–1994). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Valerie, Worth and American.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7911364. VIAF identifies the subject as 268570269. The Library of Congress control number is n80060395. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1933, 1994, 1947 and 1955.
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This entry incorporates text from “Valerie Worth” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.