Featured Author

Born October 7, 1893 in Trinidad, West Indies
Died June 11th, 1979 in Woodbury, Connecticut

Alice Dalgliesh was born in the late days of the British Empire in the little outpost of the island of Trinidad in the British West Indies. Trinidad sits like a parrot on the shoulder of South America, a fascinating little corner of nowhere. It has a small but strong industrial economy built on the back of oil resources. Apparently the southern portion of the island is strewn with oil seeps, natural outcroppings of leakages of oil bubbling up from below like the Las Breas tar pits in California.

Another surprising resource that the island has is writers. I can think of three off the top of my head who have made a major mark in literature. There is, of course, Alice Dalgliesh whom we will discuss in a minute. But there are also two brothers, one sadly now deceased, V.S. Naipaul and Shiva Naipaul. V.S. Naipaul is a literary lion in the UK, though I am not certain that he is all that well known here in the US. He writes literary fiction as well as travel and commentary, including a history of Trinidad, The Loss of El Dorado. His younger brother, Shiva Naipaul, who tragically died of a heart attack when only forty, was also beginning to blossom as a travel/history writer with a single work of his still in print, North of South, covering his travels through Africa.

Dalgliesh lived in Trinidad for the first thirteen years of her life. In her autobiographical entry in The Junior Book of Authors, she relates:

. . . My home was a big rambling house on the side of a hill. From the veranda we looked across the sea to the mountains of South America. There were always boats anchored in the bay and I was never tired of looking at them. Somehow I can never keep the sea and ships out of my stories. Ships have always had a special interest for me because of the sea-faring tradition in my family.

In the dry season I played out of doors most of the time, but in the rainy season there was always plenty of time for reading. Even now when I see Alice in Wonderland or The Swiss Family Robinson I think of the patter of raindrops on a corrugated iron roof. I liked to read almost everything: children's books and grown-up books. My father was Scotch, my mother English, and my father's Scottish books were my favorites. We had a whole shelf of Sir Walter Scott's novels and I liked to hear my father tell how "Wattie Scott" used to go over from Abbotsford to my great-grandfather's farm to sit in the kitchen with the shepherds and sheep dogs and exchange stories.

Next to reading, I liked to "pretend" and the hill at the back of the house, with its tangled tropical growth, was a fine place for playing "explorer." We did not seem to mind the fact that snakes quite frequently wriggled across our path. It was all a part of the game! We built fires and cooked out of doors, we played "desert island" and built huts of boards that we found.

She taught kindergarten and elementary school classes for the next seventeen years, but over time began to focus more energy on her efforts at writing. It was in this period that Dalgliesh became a naturalized US citizen. As a child she had enjoyed writing stories and while in England had won a number of prizes from a magazine for her submissions. In 1924, at the age of 31, she published her first book, A Happy School Year. In these early years of writing which followed, Dalgliesh focused primarily on picture books for young children and was very much an advocate of the "here and now" mode of story telling, championed by her contemporary, Margaret Wise Brown of Goodnight Moon fame. Regardless of the particular style, Dalgliesh made every effort to incorporate the lessons she learned as a teacher and to let those lessons guide her writing.

As an aside, it is interesting to see the adage from Ecclesiastes, "there is nothing new under the sun," born out in the arguments about children's books. Follow this link to a raging dispute reported in Time magazine December 9th, 1929 in which Alice Dalgliesh, then an unknown school teacher, makes a cameo appearance.

In 1934, Dalgliesh became the children's book editor at Charles Scribner's Sons where she worked for the next twenty-six years. Starting in 1929 and continuing through 1943, and while an editor at Scribners, she also wrote book reviews for Parents Magazine. She also continued her career as an author, eventually writing nearly fifty books for children (and one book for adults). Now that's a full career. One of the striking aspects of her work is the variety of top rate children's book illustrators with whom she collaborated: Leonard Weisgard, Leo Politi, Helen Sewell, Katherine Milhous, and Flavia Gag (Wanda Gag's sister).

In the first three decades of her writing career, Dalgliesh produced a number of well-received travel stories, general children's stories, and a series of three books based on the adventures of a family of children in Sandy Cove, Nova Scotia, the area where Dalgliesh summered. While these first thirty-two books were successful, they have pretty much drifted out of the reading horizons of most people. The exception would be some of the travel related books and in particular, The Silver Pencil, a lightly fictionalized work of autobiography which won a Newberry Medal Honor award in 1945.

In the fourth and final decade of her writing career, Dalgliesh suddenly broke out of her established pattern of writing popular books that faded quickly from the literary consciousness. Starting in 1952 and continuing through 1959, she wrote a string of history and historical fiction books, at both the picture book and independent reader levels, which won a series of major prizes and captured critical and popular attention. Most of these are still in print today.

The first of these books, The Bears on Hemlock Mountain, is a young independent reader level book which is the fictionalized retelling of a tall tale supposed to have had its genesis in a real event. A young boy, Jonathan, is sent by his mother to get an iron kettle from his aunt. His aunt's home is on the other side of Hemlock Mountain and the tale centers on his adventures as he lugs the large iron pot back home, all the while afraid of the bears he believes to be on the mountain even though the adults tell him there are no bears. Dalgliesh uses repetitive, rhythmic language to move the tale along and kids love the scary - but not terrifying - tension of anticipating what might happen and then love Jonathan's resourcefulness in addressing the issue of the bears, who do indeed turn out to be real. The Bears on Hemlock Mountain is a nice transition book. It is not a traditional picture book, but it is well illustrated. Consequently it is the type of book that you can read to a child when they are four or five and which they still might choose to read to themselves when they are seven or eight. The The Bears on Hemlock Mountain won a Newberry Honor Medal in 1953.

The Thanksgiving Story followed in 1954 and is much more of a traditional read-to picture book. As implied by the title, it is a simplified retelling of the traditional Thanksgiving story and is illustrated by Helen Sewell who received the 1955 Caldecott Honor award for the illustrations. Interestingly, while in recent years it has been criticized among the sensitive for its stereotyping of Native Americans, at the time it was written, it was praised for bringing more attention and life to the Native Americans as part of the Thanksgiving Story. O tempora o mores! It is a little dated but is still a wonderful retelling for the very young, especially given the strong colors of Helen Sewell's illustrations.

The Courage of Sarah Noble also was published in 1954 and was also a major prize recipient, this time the 1955 Newberry Medal Honor. Again, a story of fictionalized history based on a true event, The Courage of Sarah Noble relates the adventures of eight year old Sarah as she accompanies her father into the frontier wilderness to find and build a new home. Her mother and siblings are to follow later when her mother has regained her health. The story is exciting for the encounters with the practicalities of getting by in this unknown and often hostile environment. It is notable that one of the sub-themes that Dalgliesh built into this tale was Sarah's dawning awareness of Native Americans as people rather than as shapeless sources of fear.

The next two titles in this blinding streak of excellent writing are unfortunately not currently in print; they are, however, periodically brought back. The Columbus Story (1955) is obviously a retelling of Columbus's voyages for a young set while Ride the Wind (1956) is an account for young children of Charles Lindbergh and his trans-Atlantic flight in The Spirit of St. Louis. Also in 1956, Dalgliesh published The Fourth of July Story, another excellent telling of American civic traditions for young children.

Dalgliesh's final book, published in 1959, was Adam and the Golden Cock. Though not in print, it was another lightly fictionalized account of a true story which took place in Newton, Connecticut in 1781.

As occasionally happens, sometimes it is the immigrant who tells the best traditional stories of their adopted country and with The Columbus Story, The Thanksgiving Story, and The Fourth of July Story along with her historical fiction Adam and the Golden Cock, The Courage of Sarah Noble and The Bears of Hemlock Mountain, the Trinidadian cum American, Alice Dalgliesh has certainly borne up that tradition and bequeathed to our children a wonderful set of books for deepening a knowledge and understanding of America and its history.

Alice Dalgliesh passed away June 11th, 1979, in Woodbury, Connecticut.

Picture Book

The Thanksgiving Story by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Helen Sewell Recommended

The Fourth of July Story by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Marie Nonnast Recommended

Independent Reader

The Bears on Hemlock Mountain by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Helen Sewell Recommended

The Courage of Sarah Noble by Alice Dalgliesh &and illusteted by Leonard Weisgard Highly Recommended

Alice Dalgliesh Bibliography

A Happy School Year by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Mary Spoor Brand 1924
West Indian Play Days by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Margaret Evans Price 1926
The Little Wooden Farmer [and] The Story of the Jungle Pool by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Theodora Baumeister 1930
The Blue Teapot: Sandy Cove Stories by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Hildegard Woodward 1931
First Experiences with Literature by Alice Dalgliesh 1932
The Choosing Book by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Eloise Burns Wilkin 1932
Relief's Rocker: A Story of Sandy Cove and the Sea by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Hildegard Woodward 1932
America Travels: The Story of a Hundred Years of Travel in America by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Hildegard Woodward 1933
Christmas: A Book of Stories Old and New by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Hildegard Woodward 1934
Roundabout: Another Sandy Cove Story by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Hildegard Woodward 1934
Christmas: A Book of Stories Old and New by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Hildegard Woodward 1934
Selected Books for Young Children by Alice Dalgliesh 1934
Sailor Sam by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Alice Dalgliesh 1935
The Smiths and Rusty by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Berta and Elmer Hader 1936
Long Live the King! by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Lois Maloy 1937
Wings for the Smiths by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Berta and Elmer Hader 1937
The Horace Mann Kindergarten for Five-Year-Old Children by Alice Dalgliesh 1937
America Builds Homes: The Story of the First Colonies by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Lois Maloy 1938
America Begins: The Story of the Finding of the New World by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Lois Maloy 1938
Once on a Time by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Katherine Milhous 1938
The Gay Mother Goose by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Françoise 1938
Once on a Time by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Katherine Milhous 1938
The Will James Cowboy Book by Alice Dalgliesh 1938
The Young Aunts by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Charlotte Becker 1939
Happily Ever After by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Katherine Milhous 1939
The Hollyberrys by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Pru Herric 1939
Happily Ever After by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Katherine Milhous 1939
A Book for Jennifer by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Katherine Milhous 1940
Wings Around South America by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Katherine Milhous 1941
Three from Greenaways by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Gertrude Howe 1941
St. George and the Dragon by Richard Johnson and illustrated by Lois Maloy 1941
They Live in South America by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Katherine Milhous 1942
Gulliver Joins the Army by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Ellen Segner 1942
The Little Angel: A Story of Old Rio by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Katherine Milhous 1943
The Silver Pencil by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Katherine Milhous 1944
Along Janet's Road by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Katherine Milhous 1946
Reuben and His Red Wheelbarrow by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Ilse Bischoff 1946
The Enchanted Book by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Concetta Cacciola 1947
The Davenports Are at Dinner by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Flavia Gag 1948
The Davenports and Cherry Pie by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Flavia Gag 1949
The Bears on Hemlock Mountain by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Helen Sewell 1952
The Thanksgiving Story by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Helen Sewell 1954
The Courage of Sarah Noble by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Leonard Weisgard 1954
The Columbus Story by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Leo Politi 1955
Ride on the Wind by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Georges Schreiber 1956
The Fourth of July Story by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Marie Nonnast 1956
Aids to Choosing Books for Your Children by Alice Dalgliesh 1957
Adam and the Golden Cock by Alice Dalgliesh and illustrated by Leonard Weisgard 1959

Born May 3rd, 1896 in Whitefield, Lancashire, England
Died November 24th, 1990

Dodie Smith was a British novelist and playwright who almost incidentally wrote two of the more enduring and popular children's stories of the past sixty years. While most people might recognize at least one of her works, 101 Dalmations, because of Disney's movie versions of it, I suspect very few would recognize her as the author. Her other work which continues to capture new fans every generation flies just below the radar screen - those that recognize it, love it; but most people have never heard of I Capture the Castle.

Dodie Smith was born May 3rd, 1896 in Whitefield, Lancashire, England to Ernest and Ella Furber Smith. Tragically, her father passed away when Smith was only eighteen months old. As she related:

When I was eighteen months old my father died, and after that my mother and I lived with her family - my grandparents, three uncles and two aunts - in an old house with a garden sloping towards the Manchester Ship Canal. It was a stimulating household. Both my mother and grandmother wrote and composed. Almost everyone sang and played some musical instrument (we owned three pianos, a violin, a mandolin, a guitar and a banjo) and one uncle, an admirable amateur actor, was often to be heard rehearsing, preferably with me on hand to give him his cues. Although I had been taken to theatres long before I could read, it was the hearing of my uncle's parts which really aroused my interet in acting and in playwriting; the cues I gave got longer and longer and, by the age of nine, I had written a forty-page play. When I read this aloud to my mother she fell asleep - to awake and say apologetically, 'But darling, it was so dull.'

In 1914, the same year her mother passed away, Smith entered what became the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art to pursue a career as an actress. From the academy she joined the Portsmouth Repertory theatre and during World War I performed in France entertaining the millions of troops stationed on the Western Front. After the war she continued in her chosen career for a number of years but finally determined that a career on the stage was too financially uncertain.

While still retaining a strong interest in the theater, in 1923 she joined one of the old retailing institutions of London, Heals Furniture Store, as a toy buyer. She remained there for the next eight years until 1931. She apparently had a long running affair with the founder of the company but she also later met a fellow employee, Alec Beesley, who was to become her future husband.

All the while she worked in retailing, Smith spent her free time writing plays and screenplays for the stage and screen. 1931 saw the launch of her literary career with the production of Autumn Crocus which was critically and commercially well received. The 1930's were the playwright period of her writing career with one play following another every year or two, all being performed in London and with most of those going on to become hits on Broadway as well. Smith wrote the first few plays under the pseudonym C.L. Anthony but her identity was discovered almost right away. Call It a Day produced in 1935 was the first piece she wrote under her own name - it was also the most commercially successful of her plays with almost two hundred performances in New York and five hundred in London.

All of her plays followed a basically common form. Most are set in some domestic environment, with large casts of characters, often with a romantic angle. They are noted for their light and witty drawing-room repartee as well as for the author's attention to detail which gave some grounding to what might otherwise be too lightweight a script. Think of some fusion of Jane Eyre, The Importance of Being Ernest, and P.G. Wodehouse. Their success, particularly that of Call It a Day was attributed to the combination of normal settings with normal people/families dealing with normal issues, but doing so in a light and humorous way.

In 1938, Smith travelled with her business manager, former fellow employee at Heals, Alec Macbeth Beesley, to the US to help with the Broadway production of her most recent play Dear Octopus. While there, she and Beesley married in 1939. Owing to Beesley's status as a conscientious objector, they ended up deciding to remain in the US during the hostilities and in fact ended up living there for the next fifteen years. Their existence was somewhat peripatetic, but they ended up spending most of their time on the West Coast in Los Angeles.

While in Los Angeles, she formed friendships with other British expatriates, particularly the writers Christopher Isherwood, Charles Brackett and John Van Druten. After the string of stage successes through the 1930's, the American interlude was, with one exception, basically a fallow period. Smith wrote a couple of more plays which were produced in New York during the war years, as well as some screenplays for the Hollywood studios but other than that, she only wrote one book all through the forties.

That book was the product of a deep homesickness for England and is likely, a hundred years from now, when all the plays are forgotten, to be one of the two works for which Smith will be remembered. That book was I Capture the Castle with its arresting opening line, "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink."

It is striking just how many people have identified I Capture the Castle as a seminal book in their reading careers; usually the book that first transformed them into a reading fiend, or the book that inspired them to enter the world of letters as an author, or, most often, simply the book that made them realize there were others out there in the world like themselves. It is commonly characterized as a "girls book", and there is some truth to that. But it is a great book that almost all readers will love, especially young women (as well older ones that might not have had the pleasure of reading it in their youth).

The protagonist of the story is Cassandra Mortmain, a seventeen year-old girl living in a ruined (and hence cheap) castle in the remoteness of Suffolk in the interwar years with her older sister (Rose) and older brother (Tom), father (a reclusive novelist suffering from writer's block) and her step-mother. I Capture the Castle was not written as a children's book and, indeed, it is actually quite hard to categorize - it is not uncommon for people, in describing it, to say that it is unlike any other book they have read. Some people, having read it and knowing none of the background, are surprised to find that it is considered a children's classic. It is one of those well crafted narratives that appeal to two separate audiences but for different reasons. Adults tend to read it from the perspective of strong plot development and clever character description accentuated with incredibly subtle but detailed descriptions, all enfused with a subtle humor. Children enjoy it for the twists and turns of the plot and the realism of the young protagonist with whom they can relate and the book's complex affaire d'armour.

Cassandra and her sister Rose are determined to try and save the family fortunes. They have no income, are dependent on the generosity of the old landlord who allows them to live in the castle virtually rent free, and have been surviving for five years by making do, and selling off the furniture. Twenty-one year old Rose's financial rescue plan is to find some suitable, preferably rich suitor, though at this point of isolation, really anyone will do. Their prayers seem to have been answered when the old gentlemen dies and his heirs, two young American brothers and their mother, arrive. Nothing, however, is predictable in this remarkable tale.

Let's leave it at that. Well, rather, let's leave it with a sampling of this immensely quotable author:

'I write this sitting in the kitchen sink'

'There were moments when my deep and loving pity for her merged into a deep desire to kick her fairly hard.'

"I don't like the sound of all those lists he's making - it's like taking too many notes at school; you feel you've achieved something when you haven't."

'the pool of light in the courtyard, the golden windows, the strange long-ago look that one sees in old paintings'.

where the past is 'like a presence, a caress in the air'

In 1952, Smith and Beesley returned to the UK where they settled for the remainder of their lives (though they did periodically return to the US for visits). Smith attempted to return to her writing of the thirties by writing a series of plays through the fifties but that ship had already sailed. What was witty and mildly entertaining in the thirties seemed dated and irrelevant. The large casts around which she constructed her stories were no longer economically feasible in straightened post-war Britain.

In 1956, Smith came out with her first book explicitly written for children, 101 Dalmatians. Based on its success, in 1967 she came out with a sequel, The Starlight Barking: More about the 101 Dalmatians, as well as one other children's book, The Midnight Kittens, neither of which struck as much of a chord as did 101 Dalmatians.

An adventurous and humorous tale of smart Dalmatians (Smith had a series of Dalmatians as pets), eluding and eventually defeating the plans of the evil furrier Cruella De Vil, this book has a life of its own that was dramatically amplified when Disney came out with their cartoon version in 1961 and then much later, the film version.

That was pretty much it for Dodie Smith's books for children. Four in all, two of which are great. Through the sixties and seventies, Smith wrote a handful of novels for adults with some moderate success. Her last writing hurrah came in the early seventies and early eighties with a four book series of memoirs starting with Look Back with Love: A Manchester Childhood, in 1974 and which was by far the most popular.

In summary, Dodie Smith led a fascinating life with multiple careers and, indeed, multiple writing careers. She wrote two classics of children's literature, neither book being like the other and none of them really much in character with her other works. The final thing I would add as a point of interest is just how broad her network of interactions with other famous people and famous children's authors extended. Among the people with whom she worked over the years were Sir John Gielgud in her early plays, Christopher Isherwood from her years in California, Julian Barnes (her literary executor), Roger Moore (in the theatrical version of 101 Dalmatians in 1954), Walt Disney himself of course, but also Bill Peet, the famous children's author and illustrator who at the time worked for Disney as an illustrator and led the work for the cartoon version of 101 Dalmations.

Dodie Smith passed away November 24th, 1990.

Independent Reader

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith Highly Recommended

The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith Recommended

Dodie Smith Bibliography

British Talent by Dodie Smith (Play) 1924
Autumn Crocus (three-act comedy; produced in London by Dodie Smith (Play) 1931
Service (three-act comedy; produced in London by Dodie Smith (Play) 1932
Touch Wood (three-act comedy; produced in London by Dodie Smith (Play) 1934
Call It a Day (three-act comedy; produced in London by Dodie Smith (Play) 1935
Bonnet over the Windmill (three-act comedy; produced in London by Dodie Smith (Play) 1937
Dear Octopus (three-act comedy; produced in London by Dodie Smith (Play) 1938
Autumn Crocus, Service, and Touch Wood: Three Plays by Dodie Smith (Play) 1939
Lovers and Friends (three-act comedy; produced on Broadway by Dodie Smith (Play) 1943
The Uninvited (adapted from the novel by Dorothy Macardle) by Dodie Smith (Screenplay) 1944
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (Novel) 1948
Darling, How Could You! (adapted from Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire by James M. Barrie) by Dodie Smith (Screenplay) 1951
Letter from Paris (three-act comedy; adapted from Henry James's novel The Reverberator by Dodie Smith (Play) 1952
I Capture the Castle (two-act romantic comedy; based on her novel; produced at Aldwych Theatre by Dodie Smith (Play) 1954
The 101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith (Children's Book) 1956
These People, Those Books (three-act comedy) by Dodie Smith (Play) 1958
Amateur Means Lover (three-act comedy) by Dodie Smith (Play) 1961
The New Moon with the Old by Dodie Smith (Novel) 1963
The Town in Bloom by Dodie Smith (Novel) 1965
The Starlight Barking: More about the 101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith (Children's Book) 1967
It Ends with Revelations by Dodie Smith (Novel) 1967
A Tale of Two Families by Dodie Smith (Novel) 1970
Look Back with Love: A Manchester Childhood by Dodie Smith (Memoirs) 1974
The Midnight Kittens by Dodie Smith (Children's Book) 1978
The Girl from the Candle-lit Bath by Dodie Smith (Novel) 1978
Look Back with Mixed Feelings by Dodie Smith (Memoirs) 1978
Look Back with Astonishment by Dodie Smith (Memoirs) 1979
Look Back with Gratitude by Dodie Smith (Memoirs) 1985

Born February 4, 1925 in Lansdale, Pennsylvania

Russell Hoban has had two writing careers, one iconic and the other eclectic.

Born just outside Philadelphia on February 4, 1925, Hoban was the son of two Jewish immigrants from the Ukraine. He grew up with two sisters in a household that was primed for the arts. His father was the advertising manager of a newspaper and director of a local drama guild. He attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art and there met Lillian Aberman whom he later wed in 1944.

From 1943 to 1945, Hoban served in the US Infantry in Italy and the Philippines as a radio operator earning the Bronze Star. After demobilization, Hoban worked as an illustrator, with covers for Time, Sports Illustrated, and The Saturday Evening Post to his credit. He also worked for a short time as an advertising copywriter.

Hoban began his career as a writer for children in 1958 with his first book, which he also illustrated, What Does It Do and How Does It Work?: Power Shovel, Dump Truck, and Other Heavy Machines followed by The Atomic Submarine: A Practice Combat Patrol under the Sea in 1960.

In 1961 came the first of a series of iconic books, Bedtime for Frances. Frances is an anthropomorphized badger of certain opinions who is endearingly identifiable as any child of four to eight years of age. It is this commonality of character that allows children to relate to the protagonist and her issues and their resolution - Frances faces the day-to-day challenges of every child, attempts to deal with them as most children often do and everything ends up working out for the best.

Parents love these books because they reflect good common values of decency and simplicity wrapped up in a story that children love. They are simple morality tales that entertain and are great for bedtime reading though they are appreciated at anytime of the day. In addition to Bedtime for Frances (dealing with the tribulations of going to bed when you don't want to), the further titles in the Frances series include A Baby Sister for Frances (a new sibling), Bread and Jam for Frances (a fixation on one food) , A Birthday for Frances (dealing with ), Best Friends for Frances (social dynamics among friends), and A Bargain for Frances (false play by a friend).

The five Frances books, published between 1964 and 1970 should belong in any well-stocked children's library. As fine as the texts are, they are perfectly complimented by the pen and ink drawings done by Lillian Hoban. There is something about her particular style in these drawings that makes them both very distinctive as well as very attractive.

Hoban published some twenty other children's books in the 1960's, all illustrated by Lillian Hoban. The only other title from this period that remain in print is an interesting tale, The Mouse and His Child, published in 1967, which in some ways was a harbinger for the deeper more complex stories that Hoban would author in the 1970's. Unlike the Frances books which are centered on straightforward childhood dilemmas, The Mouse and His Child is a much more complex story, the kind which can be read at different levels and to different ends by child and adult. Interestingly, it seems to have had a much more dedicated following in the UK than in the USA.

The Mouse and His Child is the story of a pair of wind-up mice discarded from a toy store and their adventures as they seek to regain the Eden of their first home, a doll house. This story is reminiscent in some ways of some of Hans Christian Andersen's tales in that there is a darkness to the story - misadventures don't just end in laughs. There is a seriousness of purpose and consequence in the tale which stand in stark contrast to the lightness of the Frances stories. It is a worthwhile read, it does end well, but don't pick it up thinking it is anything like the Frances stories. There is more meat here even if there is less airy delight.

In 1969, the Hobans and their four children moved to London for what was to be a two year stay. Sadly though, the marriage of Lillian and Russell ended in separation and then divorce, with Lillian Hoban returning to the USA with the children. Russell Hoban remained in the UK, later remarried and had a second family (three sons) and remains resident there to this day.

His writing career since the move to the UK has been much more eclectic. His books have ranged further and further afield from easily identified children's books. There is greater depth and complexity to them and they span multiple genres such as science fiction, fantasy, drama, etc. Some are still explicitly children's books, but others are really a hybrid of young adult and adult literature.

There are five titles that have attracted particular, though narrow, acclaim; The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz; Kleinzeit; Riddley Walker; and Pilgermann, especially Riddley Walker. None of these books remain in print in the US. In fact, here in the US, the Frances books are primarily what is available in print and are the books for which Hoban is best known by far. In the UK, however, it is his novels of the past two decades that command attention and which are available.

It is difficult to summarize a general trend in Hoban's books since moving to the UK. Eclectic pretty much covers it. The dominating characteristic is his authorial dexterity and the general critical admiration for his prose. Riddley Walker in particular drew attention as the dialogue is rendered in a future dialect which is recognizable but distinctly different to today's received English. These are definitely not picture books. They will have some attraction for a population of Young Adult readers based on their originality but it will be a distinctly limited population of the Young Adult readers.

Still writing in his eighties, Hoban continues to produce new novels but here in the USA, I think his writing reputation will always rest upon that string of beautifully polished, near perfect children's stories of the sixties - the Frances stories.

Picture Books

Bedtime for Frances by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Garth Williams Highly Recommended

A Baby Sister for Frances by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban Recommended

Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban Recommended

The Little Brute Family by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban Recommended

The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban Recommended

A Birthday for Frances by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban Recommended

Best Friends for Frances by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban Recommended

A Bargain for Frances by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban Recommended

Russell Hoban Bibliography

What Does It Do and How Does It Work?: Power Shovel, Dump Truck, and Other Heavy Machines by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Russell Hoban 1959
The Atomic Submarine: A Practice Combat Patrol under the Sea by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Russell Hoban 1960
Bedtime for Frances by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Garth Williams 1960
Herman the Loser by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban 1961
The Song in My Drum by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban 1961
London Men and English Men by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban 1962
Some Snow Said Hello by Russell Hoban 1963
The Sorely Trying Day by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban 1964
A Baby Sister for Frances by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban 1964
Nothing to Do by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban 1964
Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban 1964
W. R. Burnett, The Roar of the Crowd: Conversations with an Ex-Big-Leaguer by C. N. Potter and illustrated by Russell Hoban 1964
Tom and the Two Handles by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban 1965
The Story of Hester Mouse Who Became a Writer and Saved Most of Her Sisters and Brothers and Some of Her Aunts and Uncles from the Owl by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban 1965
What Happened When Jack and Daisy Tried to Fool the Tooth Fairies by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban 1965
Henry and the Monstrous Din by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban 1966
The Little Brute Family by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban 1966
Goodnight by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban 1966
Save My Place by Russell Hoban 1967
Charlie the Tramp by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban 1967
The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban 1967
A Birthday for Frances by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban 1968
The Stone Doll of Sister Brute by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban 1968
The Pedaling Man, and Other Poems by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban 1968
Harvey's Hideout by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban 1969
Best Friends for Frances by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban 1969
Ugly Bird by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban 1969
The Mole Family's Christmas by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban 1969
A Bargain for Frances by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban 1970
Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban 1971
The Sea-Thing Child by Russell Hoban and illustrated by son 1972
Egg Thoughts, and Other Frances Songs by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban 1972
Letitia Rabbit's String Song by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Mary Chalmers 1973
The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz by Russell Hoban 1973
How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Quentin Blake 1974
Ten What?: A Mystery Counting Book by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Sylvie Selig 1974
La Corona and the Tin Frog by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Nicola Bayley 1974
Kleinzeit by Russell Hoban 1974
Crocodile and Pierrot: A See the Story Book by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Sylvie Selig 1975
Dinner at Alberta's by Russell Hoban and illustrated by James Marshall 1975
A Near Thing for Captain Najork by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Quentin Blake 1975
Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban 1975
Arthur's New Power by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Byron Barton 1978
The Twenty-Elephant Restaurant by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully 1978
The Dancing Tigers by Russell Hoban and illustrated by David Gentlemen 1979
Flat Cat by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Clive Scruton 1980
Ace Dragon Ltd. by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Quentin Blake 1980
Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban 1980
Come and Find Me by Russell Hoban 1980
They Came from Aargh! by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Colin McNaughton 1981
The Serpent Tower by Russell Hoban and illustrated by David Scott 1981
The Great Fruit Gum Robbery by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Colin McNaughton 1981
The Battle of Zormla by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Colin McNaughton 1982
The Flight of Bembel Rudzuk by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Colin McNaughton 1982
Big John Turkle by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Martin Baynton 1983
Jim Frog by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Martin Baynton 1983
Pilgermann by Russell Hoban 1983
Lavinia Bat by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Martin Baynton 1984
Charlie Meadows by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Martin Baynton 1984
The Carrier Frequency by Russell Hoban 1984
The Rain Door by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Quentin Blake 1986
The Marzipan Pig by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Quentin Blake 1986
Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban 1986
The Medusa Frequency by Gary Fisketjohn and illustrated by Russell Hoban 1987
Household Tales by Wilhelm K. Grimm and illustrated by Mervyn Peake 1987
Ponders by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Martin Baynton 1988
Monsters by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Quentin Blake 1989
Jim Hedgehog and the Lonesome Tower by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Betsy Lewin 1990
Jim Hedgehog's Supernatural Christmas by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Betsy Lewin 1992
M.O.L.E.: Much Overworked Little Earthmover by Russell Hoban 1993
The Court of the Winged Serpent by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Patrick Benson 1995
Trokeville Way by Russell Hoban 1996
Fremder by Russell Hoban 1996
Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer by Russell Hoban 1998
A Russell Hoban Omnibus by Russell Hoban 1999
Angelica's Grotto by Russell Hoban 1999
Trouble on Thunder Mountain by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Quentin Blake 2000
Jim's Lion by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Ian Andrew 2001
Amaryllis Night and Day by Russell Hoban 2002
The Bat Tattoo by Russell Hoban 2003
Her Name Was Lola by Russell Hoban 2004
Come Dance with Me by Russell Hoban 2006
Linger Awhile by Russell Hoban and illustrated by 2006
My Tango with Barbara Strozzi by Russell Hoban 2007

Born September 27, 1924 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Bernard Waber is an American author/illustrator born in 1924 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania into an immigrant family. He was the youngest by ten years of four children. His childhood was one rich in family, art, music, conversation and entertainment. At the same time it was also one of near poverty as his father struggled from one unsuccessful business venture to another, steps ahead of creditors. Frequent moves, unheated houses, and hand me downs were integral parts of his childhood. Yet for all that, there is a hope, optimism and confidence in the rightness of life and of the possibility that all will turn out right in all Waber's books.

Despite the difficult circumstances of his childhood, there were some aspects that eventually had a positive outcome. As Waber wrote in his biographical entry in The Third Book of Junior Authors

"The prospect of moving loomed continually during the depression years as one or another of our family's business ventures folded. Each time a move was considered, I sought assurance from my parents that the new neighborhood would be bountiful with prospective playmates, and that a public library and motion picture theater would exist within easy roller-skating distance. Like food and drink, I considered the library and movies life-giving staples, and could not conceive of survival without them. The library, with its great store of unrequired reading, was a banquet to which I brought a ravenous appetite. And the movies; western, thriller, adventure-story - it never mattered - I was a willing transportee to whatever cinematic never-never-land Saturday's marquee hailed."

And in Contemporary Authors Online he is quoted:

"When I was about eight years of age," he once recalled, "I had the astonishing good fortune to obtain after-school employment in a neighborhood movie theater. It was my job to raise seats and pick up discarded candy wrappers after daily matinee performances. Admission to a movie theater free of charge was living and breathing my own fantasy. It was also my first experience doing work I enjoyed." "Each day," he continued, "I raced from school to theater . . . and caught the final ten or fifteen minutes of . . . a daily new feature film. Following the performance, having seen only the ending, I would try and reconstruct what I imagined to be the middle and beginning. It occurs to me that this was my earliest attempt at plotting, which may or may not account for the frequency with which endings to my own stories come to me before I have realized earlier developments."

On his return to civilian life, Waber changed his focus and enrolled in the Philadelphia College of Art and then the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, completing his studies in 1951. He moved to New York began his career in commercial art and graphic design. The following year, in 1952, he married Ethel Bernstein. In his career in graphic design from 1952 - 1988, Waber worked for Conde Nast Publications, Seventeen, Life, and People.

Raising his children in New York City, Waber found himself becoming more and more involved in reading to them and enjoying their illustrated books to such an extent that they chided him about following them around in the library. He determined to turn his hand to writing children's books, and began working evenings and weekends on top of his regular job.

His first offerings were rejected numerous times before Houghton finally accepted two submissions, the first of which, Lorenzo, was published in 1961. Waber has published nearly forty children's books since then, all of which he has written and illustrated himself.

Waber's art work is of a cartoon style. His early work was characterized with strong black lines outlining a simple palette of colors. Over the years this style has mellowed somewhat but the entire body of work is of a recognizable whole and has a distinctive feel of a certain time and era of children's illustrations. While I am not usually all that big a fan of the art fashions of the sixties or of the cartoon style of illustration, for some reason that I cannot convey well, Waber makes it work. I think the strong line work and simply conveyed graphics create an image that appeals to children while they listen to the story.

Across the nearly forty books he has written, there are three groups of work that stand out. Waber's second book was the classic House on East 88th Street. This became the first of what has grown to be a series of eight books featuring one of the great creations of childhood characters - Lyle the Crocodile. The Primm family moves into their new home on East 88th Street only to discover, following the sound of splashing to the bathroom, that it is already occupied by Lyle the Crocodile. How he came to be there and his adventures with the Primm family are the basis for the series of stories all of which can be read as stand alone tales.

There is a second mini-series of two books that stand out: the Ira stories. First came Ira Sleeps Over in 1972 and then, in 1988, came Ira Says Goodbye. The genesis of these stories was Waber's real life experience with his children and their friends. As he explained to Carolyn S. Brodie in an interview in June 2003 (School Library Media Activities Monthly Vol,. 19 Issue 10 page 42):

My children loved teddy bears, and I do too. There was a lot of sleeping at friends' houses and taking along a teddy bear for comfort. The idea for Ira probably took form with the sleepover invitation my young son extended to a friend. The invitee was a tough kind of kid with total self-command, who arrived at our house toting a giant panda. I thought even tough Brad (his name) needs something comforting to see him through the night.

The final group is a set of standalone stories, linked only by the fact that children love them and that all but one have anthropomorphized animals as their protagonists: You Look Ridiculous, Said the Rhinoceros to the Hippopotamus; An Anteater Named Arthur; A Lion Named Shirley Williamson; The Mouse That Snored; Do You See a Mouse?; and Courage. Courage, working from an earlier draft of a book he had started, was Waber's response to the 9/11 attacks and, in simple fashion, outlines to children the various ways that they show courage on a day-by-day basis - starting with routine things like "Courage is going to bed without a nightlight", to a little bit more esoteric such as "Courage is tasting the vegetable before making a face", to one of my favorites "Courage is explaining the rip in your brand-new pants."

From a parent's perspective, Waber is an attractive author/illustrator because he is so attuned to the real issues of a child as witnessed by a parent. All his stories have a gentle but engaging attractiveness. The child joins in and follows along with the tale because it is well written and the characters are distinctive and irrepressible. Also the stories, told through the animal protagonist, are of exactly the sorts of trials and conundrums with which the child wrestles every day. Being teased? Ira Sleeps Over. A friend leaving? Ira Says Goodbye. Dealing with a difficult personality? Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile. Dealing with jealousy? Lyle and the Birthday Party.

There is an odd coincidence in here. Last week's featured author was Russell Hoban who was also born in Philadelphia, just six months after Waber. He also interrupted his academic career to serve in the Army. He also trained as an illustrator but started writing in part based on his reading to his children. And he, and his wife Lillian Hoban, also developed a lovable anthropomorphized character, the badger Frances. While the art work is distinctively different, the Frances books, as with Lyle, are iconic of the sixties. The last interesting similarity is that the Frances books and the Lyle books (along with Waber's other books) share a similar feel - as a parent you can look to them to entertain your child, make them laugh, and also learn about the little bumps along the road of growing up.

Waber's books are almost uniformly of that group that serve as a reading bridge. They are wonderful read-to stories for four or five year olds but they are also candidates for a child's first reading books as well.

Enjoy them all but I recommend starting with The House on East 88th Street.

Picture Books

House on East Eighty-Eighth Street by Bernard Waber Highly Recommended

Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile by Bernard Waber Highly Recommended

Lyle and the Birthday Party by Bernard Waber Recommended

Lovable Lyle by Bernard Waber Suggested

Ira Sleeps Over by Bernard Waber Highly Recommended

Lyle Finds His Mother by Bernard Waber Recommended

But Names Will Never Hurt Me by Bernard Waber Suggested

Funny, Funny Lyle by Bernard Waber Suggested

Ira Says Goodbye by Bernard Waber Recommended

Lyle at the Office by Bernard Waber Suggested

Do You See a Mouse? by Bernard Waber Recommended

Lion Named Shirley Williamson by Bernard Waber Suggested

Bearsie Bear and the Surprise Sleepover Party by Bernard Waber Suggested

Lyle at Christmas by Bernard Waber Suggested

The Mouse That Snored by Bernard Waber Suggested

Fast Food! Gulp! Gulp! by Bernard Waber Suggested

Courage by Bernard Waber Recommended

Evie And Margie by Bernard Waber Suggested

Bernard Waber Bibliography

Lorenzo written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1961
The House on East 88th Street written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1962
How to Go about Laying an Egg written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1963
Rich Cat, Poor Cat written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1963
Just like Abraham Lincoln written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1964
Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1965
You Look Ridiculous, Said the Rhinoceros to the Hippopotamus written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1966
Lyle and the Birthday Party written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1966
Cheese written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1967
An Anteater Named Arthur written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1967
A Rose for Mr. Bloom written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1968
Lovable Lyle written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1969
A Firefly Named Torchy written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1970
Nobody Is Perfick (collection of short stories) written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1971
Ira Sleeps Over written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1972
Lyle Finds His Mother written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1974
I Was All Thumbs written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1975
But Names Will Never Hurt Me written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1976
Good-bye, Funny Dumpy-Lumpy written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1977
Mice on My Mind written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1977
The Snake: A Very Long Story written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1978
Dear Hildegarde written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1980
You're a Little Kid with a Big Heart written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1980
Bernard written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1982
Funny, Funny Lyle written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1987
Ira Says Goodbye written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1988
Lyle at the Office written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1994
Do You See a Mouse? written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1995
Gina written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1995
A Lion Named Shirley Williamson written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1996
Bearsie Bear and the Surprise Sleepover Party written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1997
Lyle at Christmas written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 1998
The Mouse That Snored written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 2000
Fast Food! Gulp! Gulp! written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 2001
Courage written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 2002
Evie & Margie written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 2003
Betty's Day Off written and illustrated by Bernard Waber 2005

Born April 24, 1911 in Union City, Ohio
Died August 12, 1986 in Kingston City, New York

The 1960's saw much experimentation in the field of children's illustrations with a marked increase in drawings with sharp, angular figures, muted colors and representational or cartoon-like styles. Evaline Ness, an illustrator and author of children's books thrived in this environment.

While she is principally remembered for her 1967 Caldecott winning story, Sam, Bangs, and Moonshine, her work is present across the decade but often unrecognized as being by a single artist. Ness wrote and illustrated her own books, illustrated books by others, and produced the covers for numerous well known writers. Many people know and love Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins, without realizing that Ness did the original cover in 1961. Similarly, Alexander Lloyd is famous for his Prydain Chronicles, the very distinctive covers of which were produced by Ness.

The principle reason, I suspect, that Ness's work goes unrecognized is a tribute to her versatility. While her main medium might be in ink and wash illustrations, she produced art across a wide range of media including paintings, drawings, sketches, serigraphs, lithographs, woodblocks, etc. and in a variety of styles.

Ness took a circuitous path to becoming an author and illustrator. She was born in 1911 in Union City, Ohio but grew up in Pontiac, Michigan. As a child she demonstrated an early artistic streak by illustrating the stories told by an older sister with collages she made from cutouts from magazines pictures.

After high school she initially attended Ball State Teachers College to become a librarian but this course of study did not suit her. However, one of her early assignments entailed the illustration of a story, King Arthur's Court, and this experience sparked an intense desire to pursue art studies. Abandoning Ball State, Ness enrolled at Chicago Art Institute for the next two years. Continuing her meandering career path, she apparently, not being familiar with the distinction, enrolled in the Fine Arts department rather than what she truly was interested in, the Commercial Art department. Following two years of studies, she did enter the field of commercial and fashion art, producing work for department stores and illustrating for magazines, working initially in Chicago.

It was in Chicago that she met her second husband (a brief earlier marriage having failed), former Treasury Agent Eliot Ness of The Untouchables fame. If you have seen the movie, it is not actually Evaline Ness being portrayed; Eliot Ness was also married multiple times. Eliot and Evaline Ness married in 1938 and remained married till 1946. Though she subsequently remarried a third time to Arnold Bayard (a mechanical engineer) in 1959, she retained the Ness name professionally throughout her career.

She and Eliot Ness moved to Washington, D.C. where she continued her work, then enrolled in classes from 1943-45 at the Corcoran School of Art where she also taught art to children. In 1946 the Ness's divorced and Evaline Ness moved to New York. In New York she illustrated for Seventeen magazine as well as producing fashion drawings for Saks Fifth Avenue. She established her reputation as an illustrator in fashion and advertising and pursued a successful career as a freelance illustrator producing illustrations for such magazines as Sports Illustrated, Ladies' Home Journal, and Good Housekeeping. Later, Ness took a year off from her work to spend time in Italy, once again taking courses in art, this time from the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome from 1951-52.

The first children's book she illustrated was the Story of Ophelia by Mary J. Gibbons in 1954. This was followed in 1957 with her illustrating a book by Charlton Ogburn, The Bridge. This seems to have been in her mind, the true launch of her children's illustration and writing career. After this book, she gave up all her commercial work to focus on children's books.

From 1958 to 1963 she illustrated close to a dozen books by other authors and firmly established her legacy as an illustrator by receiving three Caldecott Honors in a row. During this period, she spent a year in Haiti. Returning from that experience she had a collection of woodcuts for which she then created a story which became her first book, Josefina February brought out in 1963. Her feat of being recognized three years in a row with a Caldecott Honor also began in 1963. She received the award for All in the Morning Early by Sorche Nic Leodhas in 1963, followed by A Pocketful of Cricket by Rebecca Caudill in 1964 and then again in 1965 for Tom Tit Tot: An English Folktale retold by Virginia Haviland. Continuing this string of good fortune and recognition, in 1967 she received the Caldecott Medal for her sixth book as the author and illustrator, Sam, Bangs, and Moonshine.

Sam, Bangs and Moonshine is a superb book on many levels. It is well written in simple, straightforward language that is very accessible to a young child. The media is inks and wash with a combination of block colors and shapes with elements of the graphic rendered in realistic style as well. That is not inherently a style that appeals to me but the integration of the overall artwork with the story overrides what is just an aesthetic bias.

Sam is the only daughter of a widower fisherman living "on a small island, near a large harbor." She has a cat, Bangs, and a little neighbor boy, Thomas, who "believed every word Sam said." Which was unfortunate, given that Sam had as distant a relationship to the truth as a politician up for election. "Not even the sailors home from the sea could tell stranger stories than Sam. Not even the ships in the harbor, with curious cargoes from giraffes to gerbils, claimed more wonders than Sam did. She said her mother was a mermaid, when everyone knew she was dead. Sam said she had a fierce lion at home, and a baby kangaroo. (Actually, what she really had was an old wise cat called Bangs.)"

This inability to distinguish between the reality she lives and the reality she wishes, (the difference between REAL and MOONSHINE, as her father puts it) leads Sam into the position of accidentally imperiling both Thomas and Bangs.

Ness's mastery as an artist and her ability to weave together story and illustrations is exemplified at that stage in the tale when she believes she has caused the demise of her beloved Bangs. Your child is snuggled up next to you, as disconsolate as Sam. You turn the page to read the rest of the text, and there, facing you is a full page illustration of a black cat staring through a window pane with "two enormous yellow eyes." Immediately after fearing the worst, your young child's anxiety is alleviated even before you get to the text.

Her mastery as an author is also on display. It would have been easy and pat for Ness to have made Sam a hero, organizing a rescue of Thomas and Bangs. But life doesn't work that way and children know it. Instead Sam suffers as a child suffers, waiting as the consequences of the actions she set in motion play out. Waiting and not knowing. This is the kind of a story to which a child can emotionally relate; it is their life they are reading about. They know these feelings Sam is feeling.

For a parent there is the pleasure of a story well-told, but there is also the pleasure of a story that packs an emotional punch and a story that helps set some parameters for a child, in this case about truth telling, in such a way that the message is there and received but the story is not about the message. These are the best books of all. Good stories that help you shape your child's understanding of what is right and what is wrong and why it is important and why they need to do the right thing.

I had forgotten just how good this book was till I pulled it down for this essay. We read it to each of our kids as they passed through the ages of three to six and they all enjoyed it, but we were reading so many books to them. Sometimes it is easy to lose track of individual books and their effect. This was one of the special ones.

Ness continued writing and illustrating into 1980's producing some great covers (such as the Lloyd Alexander books) and other wonderful picture books but none of them are now in print. She also, ever experimenting, branched out into producing cut-out coloring books for children.

Evaline Ness passed away August 12, 1986 in Kingston City, New York. Her legacy is a number of distinctively-illustrated, well-told stories that will touch children's hearts and minds.

Picture Books

Sam Bangs and Moonshine by Evaline Ness Highly Recommended

A Pocketful of Cricket by Rebecca Caudill and illustrated by Evaline Ness Suggested

The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope and illustrated by Evaline Ness Suggested

Evaline Ness Bibliography

Story of Ophelia by Mary J. Gibbons and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1954
The Bridge by Charlton Ogburn and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1957
The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Pope and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1958
Lonely Maria by Elizabeth Coatsworth and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1960
Ondine, the Story of a Bird Who Was Different by Maurice Osborne, Jr. and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1960
Listen--The Birds; Poems by Mary B. Miller and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1961
Across from Indian Shore by Barbara Robinson and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1962
Macaroon by Julia Cunningham and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1962
Thistle and Thyme: Tales and Legends from Scotland by Sorche Nic Leodhas and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1962
Where Did Josie Go? by Helen E. Buckley and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1962
Josefina February by Evaline Ness and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1963
A Gift for Sula Sula by Evaline Ness and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1963
All in the Morning Early by Sorche Nic Leodhas and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1963
Funny Town by Eve Merriam and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1963
The Princess and the Lion by Elizabeth Coatsworth and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1963
Exactly Alike by Evaline Ness and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1964
Pavo and the Princess by Evaline Ness and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1964
Some Cheese for Charles by Helen E. Buckley and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1964
Candle Tales by Julia Cunningham and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1964
Josie and the Snow by Helen E. Buckley and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1964
A Pocketful of Cricket by Rebecca Caudill and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1964
A Double Discovery by Evaline Ness and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1965
Coll and His White Pig by Lloyd Alexander and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1965
Tom Tit Tot: An English Folk Tale by Virginia Haviland and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1965
Favorite Fairy Tales Told in Italy by Virginia Haviland and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1965
Sam, Bangs, and Moonshine by Evaline Ness and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1966
Pierino and the Bell by Sylvia Cassedy and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1966
Josie's Buttercup by Helen E. Buckley and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1967
Mr. Miacca: An English Folk Tale by Joseph Jacobs and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1967
The Truthful Harp by Lloyd Alexander and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1967
Kellyburn Braes by Sorche Nic Leodhas and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1968
Long, Broad, and Quickeye by Evaline Ness and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1969
Joey and the Birthday Present by Maxine Kumin and Anne Sexton and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1969
A Scottish Songbook by Sorche Nic Leodhas and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1969
The Girl and the Goatherd; or This and That and Thus and So by Evaline Ness and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1970
Some of the Days of Everett Anderson by Lucille Clifton and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1970
Do You Have the Time, Lydia? by Evaline Ness and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1971
Everett Anderson's Christmas Coming by Lucille Clifton and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1971
Too Many Crackers by Helen E. Buckley and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1971
Old Mother Hubbard and Her Dog by Sarah Catherine Martin and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1972
Don't You Remember? by Lucille Clifton and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1973
The Woman of the Wood: A Tale from Old Russia by Algernon David Black and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1973
Yeck Eck by Evaline Ness and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1974
The Steamroller, A Fantasy by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1974
A Wizard's Tears by Maxine Kumin and Anne Sexton and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1975
American Colonial Paper House: To Cut out and Color by Evaline Ness 1975
Amelia Mixed the Mustard, and Other Poems by Evaline Ness 1975
The Lives of My Cat Alfred by Nathan Zimelman and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1976
The Warmint by Walter de la Mare and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1976
Paper Palace: To Cut out and Color by Evaline Ness 1976
The Devil's Bridge by Charles Scribner, Jr. and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1978
What Color Is Caesar? by Maxine Kumin and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1978
Four Rooms from the Metropolitan Museum: To Cut out and Color by Evaline Ness 1978
A Victorian Paper House: To Cut out and Color by Evaline Ness 1978
Marcella's Guardian Angel by Evaline Ness and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1979
A Shaker Paper House: To Cut out and Color by Evaline Ness 1979
Fierce the Lion by Evaline Ness and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1980
The Hand-Me-Down Doll by Steven Kroll and illustrated by Evaline Ness 1983
Taran Wanderer by Lloyd Alexander and cover designed by Evaline Ness
The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander and cover designed by Evaline Ness
The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander and cover designed by Evaline Ness
The Castle of Llyr by Lloyd Alexander and cover designed by Evaline Ness
The High King by Lloyd Alexander and cover designed by Evaline Ness
Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell and cover designed by Evaline Ness 1960