Books Received

Arthur Mee: A Biography. By Keith Crawford. Cambridge: Lutterworth, 2016.

Drawing heavily on a trove of detailed letters, biographer Keith Crawford provides a thorough account of Mee’s career as a journalist, editor, and author of nonfiction works for children during the early decades of the twentieth century. Mee is best remembered today for editing a popular British children’s magazine, The Children’s Encyclopedia, but as Crawford makes clear, he was also a prolific writer and editor of books that were read by children throughout the British Empire prior to the Second World War.

Drawn Together: The Biography of Caldecott Award-Winning Authors Berta and Elmer Hader. By Sybilla Avery Cook. Portland, OR: Concordia U Publishing, 2016.

Sybilla Avery Cook provides a highly readable portrait of Berta and Elmer Hader, best known for The Big Snow, which won the Caldecott Medal in 1949. This joint biography also sheds light on the workings of children’s publishing in America during the first half of the twentieth century.

Love from Boy: Roald Dahl’s Letters to His Mother. Edited by Donald Sturrock. London: Murray, 2016.

For forty years, Roald Dahl regularly wrote letters to his mother, Sofie Magdalene, beginning when he was a nine-year-old student at boarding school and continuing until shortly before her death in 1965. In this volume, Dahl’s biographer Donald Sturrock compiles these letters along with useful introductory material. The result is a revealing and detailed account of Dahl’s relationship with his mother and his growth as a writer.

The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults. By Cheryl B. Klein. New York: Norton, 2016.

In this practical guide to writing novels for young people, Cheryl B. Klein draws on her many years of experience as executive editor at Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic, supporting her advice with specific examples from classical and popular children’s literature. She concludes with a useful list of excellent children’s books that aspiring authors should know before setting out to write for child readers.