Children’s book author and journalist Karen Blumenthal, who specialized in narrative nonfiction (and cookies!) addressing complex, sometimes controversial, subjects, died on May 19 in her hometown of Dallas, following a heart attack. She was sixty-one.

Blumenthal was born and raised in Dallas, where she loved reading and visits to the public library, crediting Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh for inspiring her to become a journalist. Blumenthal was yearbook editor and class valedictorian at Hillcrest High School. At Duke University, she became editor of the university’s newspaper.

Blumenthal began her career at the Dallas Morning News, then accepted a position at the Wall Street Journal’s Dallas bureau as a reporter and editor. Blumenthal returned to the Morning News as business editor in 1994 and became the Journal’s Dallas bureau chief from 1996 to 2004. She performed editing work on a WSJ piece about 9/11 which won a Pulitzer Prize.

According to Publishers Weekly, when her own daughters became readers, Blumenthal grew frustrated with the nonfiction titles available to them. Her desire to change the situation spurred her to try writing for young people. Her first published book was Six Days in October: The Stock Market Crash of 1929 (Atheneum, 2002). Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX: The Law That Changed the Future of Girls in America (Atheneum, 2005) followed, and Blumenthal knew she wanted to continue on the path of exploring complex and sometimes controversial topics in this format. By 2006, Blumenthal left her full-time position at the Journal to be a freelance writer, though she continued with the paper as a personal finance columnist until 2013.

Blumenthal wrote nine titles for young readers, including her most recent, Jane Against the World: Roe v. Wade and the Fight for Reproductive Rights, published by Roaring Brook in February. She also wrote three business titles for adults. Her books have won a Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal, a Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, the Kentucky Bluegrass Award, and she was a finalist for YALSA’s Award for Nonfiction three times.

Emily Feinberg, Blumenthal’s editor at Roaring Brook, said: “I feel so lucky to have gotten to know Karen, and to have worked so closely with her on her most recent book,” she said. “When I was editing Jane Against the World, Karen and I would joke that most of my comments in track changes weren’t edits at all; they were me writing WTF next to a fact about a horrible deed or poisonous law. When I learned that she passed away, all I could think was that I want to write WTF in the margin, but she won’t be able to respond.”

Feinberg continued, “Karen was the best of us all. She was humble and curious. Brilliant and kind. She was unstoppable. If she needed an interview or an answer, I’m convinced she didn’t sleep until she got what she wanted. She was a journalist through and through and was committed fully to the truth—both finding it and delivering it to young readers. Our world is less now because she’s not in it. I’ll miss her very much.”

Blumenthal chaired the board of Friends of the Dallas Public Library for two years and served on the Dallas Public Library board beginning in 2011. She was recently appointed its vice chair. Sarah Losinger, the library board chair for the past eight years, told the Morning News that she was having a hard time processing the news. “She was so energetic,” said Losinger, who represents Council District 13. “You can just see Karen furrowing her eyebrows and taking something on. I’m just sinking. I just can’t believe it.”

Blumenthal is survived by her mother, brother, several nieces and nephews, her husband, fellow journalist Scott McCartney, and their two daughters, who told the Morning News that anyone who wants to honor Blumenthal can do so by “working to repair the world and enjoying a great cookie.”