Francelia Esther McWilliams Butler, 1913-1998: A Remembrance

Francelia Butler wrote in her Sharing Literature with Children that, “The ‘hidden’ child in the adult is what . . . adults must recapture if they are to work most effectively with children.” Francelia herself was most effective with children, their literature, and with life itself because her “child” was right out there, ready and willing to talk and play.

Francelia’s “child” was sometimes scatty, disorganized, messy, inquisitive, irresponsible, vain, and often quite maddening, but always enthusiastic. In 1972, I began the Children’s Literature Association (ChLA) while I was teaching in Michigan. In the first months, I contacted many different people in the field of children’s literature. Most of them, though patient and polite, were not interested either in helping with or joining the infant Association. In 1973, however, when I contacted Francelia in Connecticut, she immediately jumped right in with suggestions, enthusiasm, and encouragement. Despite the fact that the Association and I were both unknown quantities, she was willing to unite her journal, then called Children’s Literature: The Great Excluded, with the ChLA. Without her, and her “child’s” enthusiasm, as well as her belief that nothing is impossible—and her journal, Children’s Literature—the ChLA would probably not have succeeded.

Although the mischievous child was always with Francelia, she was also kind, generous, open-hearted, gracious, and welcoming—and a collector of people and stories. Hundreds of people, including myself, were “collected” by Francelia—and helped and pushed. Francelia got us jobs, places to live, pushed us academically and intellectually, introduced us to new friends, and wined, dined, and partied us, for Francelia loved parties.

At parties, Francelia was the consummate hostess—witty and welcoming, with an enviable aplomb even in the face of disasters that would have flattened some lesser person. One story she loved to tell on herself was about the time when she gave a party for Pamela Travers, the author of the Mary Poppins books. During the party, she was holding forth, center stage, telling one of her wonderful stories, when her long, floor-length skirt fell off, revealing her bright orange underpants in all their glory! With no loss of dignity, she merely laughed and pulled her skirt back up, saying, “I thought it had gotten awfully drafty in here.”

I worked with Francelia and was her friend for twenty-five years. During that time, until the last year of her life when she was so sick, we spoke on the phone at least five or six times a week, sometimes more, and spent countless hours at her kitchen table swapping stories and ideas. As with all her friends, she was generous in sharing both her home and her ideas, and was constantly plotting new things, new ways to teach both children’s literature and the practice of peace to children. She had me firmly convinced that she would live forever, that someone as “young” as she was, someone who was still a “child,” would never die. She was a fixture in my life and in the lives of many others. There is and was no one like her.