Lee Bennett Hopkins, passionate educator and prolific children’s poet and anthologist, died on August 8 in Cape Coral, Fla., following a hospitalization for COPD. He was 81.
Many of Hopkins’s books have been celebrated over the years with distinctions and awards from the American Library Association, the International Reading Association, and the National Council of Teachers of English, among others. Hopkins has lived in Cape Coral, Fla. since 2004 with his husband, Charles Egita, and in 2017 became the first Cape Coral resident to be inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame.
