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| Betsy Byars |
Award-winning children's author Betsy Byars died last month at age 91. Her best-known work,
The Summer of the Swans (1970), won the Newbery Medal. Her other books include
The Night Swimmers (1980), which won a National Book Award; Edgar Award-winner
Wanted... Mud Blossom (1991), one of several titles about the Blossom children;
The Midnight Fox (1968),
The Glory Girl (1983),
Coast to Coast (1992) and a memoir,
The Moon and I (1991). Byars wrote more than 60 books for, according to the
Washington Post, "those in-between children too young to be called big and too old to be called small."
"Every time I sit down to write a book, I feel like that character in the old fairy tale who, in order to survive, has to spin straw into gold," Byars told the
School Librarian. "What I know about spinning straw is nil, and I have learned from hard reality that no little man in a funny suit is going to pop out of the woodwork to strike a deal.... We authors write the best we can, with what skills we have, what tricks we've learned, and then if we are lucky, very lucky, the straw actually will be turned into gold, for a fleeting moment by the miraculous mind of a child."
