Chris van Abkoude (6 November 1880,

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"N ...

– 2 January 1960,

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populou ...

) was a Dutch writer and novelist of mostly children's books. He wrote the '' series of Pietje Bell novels'' from 1914 to 1936 and many books in between. He moved to the United States in 1916 and wrote all the ''Pietje Bell'' books in the United States, except for the first one, which he wrote in 1914 in Rotterdam. In 1923 Van Abkoude wrote the novel ''Kruimeltje'' (''Little Crumb'') and in 1999 the film '' Little Crumb'' was released. Before his writing career, Van Abkoude was a teacher; when he noticed the children did not like reading the children's books of the time, he wrote his own. In the U.S., he anglicized his name to Charles Winters.

References

Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren
- A website with information on him and his books 1880 births 1960 deaths Dutch male novelists Writers from Rotterdam 20th-century Dutch novelists 20th-century Dutch male writers Dutch emigrants to the United States {{Netherlands-writer-stub