page_title: Selina Chönz
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Selina Chönz / Biography
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Wohnhaus Selina Chönz, Guarda GR, Schweiz
context_page_description: Selina Chönz or Selina Choenz was a Swiss children's author. Her most famous work is A Bell for Ursli, a children's book illustrated by Alois Carigiet.
context_section_description: Selina Chönz was born  in Samedan on August 4 1910 as the oldest child and the only daughter to printer and typesetter Anton M. Meyer from Hof and his wife, Marie Louise Ronzi. Chönz trained as a Montessori kindergarten teacher in Bern. She then spent time learning languages by moving to Spain, England and Italy. Her first teaching position was in Zuoz in the Engadin. Shortly after she moved to Zurich to teach kindergarten teachers. While there she decided to write a children's book herself.
  Chönz was a proponent of Romansh. When she married, she changed the spelling of her name to replace the German "K" with the "Ch". She wrote the original version of the A Bell for Ursli in Upper Engadin Romansh. She persuaded artist Alois Carigiet to be her illustrator. From 1940 to 1945 he visited Guarda, Switzerland and created the illustrations. He used the nearby houses Chasa 51 as the template for the Ursli house in the book.
  Several further stories followed and the books were translated into a number of languages. She was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Prize.
caption: Chönz house, Guarda 47
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