Phyllis Crawford (February 8, 1899 – July 1980) was, during the 1930s and 1940s, an American author of books for children in their early teens. Born in

Little Rock, Arkansas Little Rock is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Arkansas, most populous city of the U.S. state of Arkansas. The city's population was 202,591 as of the 2020 census. The six-county Central Arkan ...

, she graduated from Randolph-Macon Woman's College in 1920 and then from library school at the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United ...

in 1924 and became an editorial assistant for H.W. Wilson. In 1930, she published her first children's book '' The Blot: Little City Cat''. In 1938, she wrote '' Hello the Boat!'' (Holt, 1938), which won the top prize of $3,000 from the Julia Ellsworth Ford Foundation and was a 1939

Newbery Award The John Newbery Medal, frequently shortened to the Newbery, is a literary award given by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), to the author of "the most distinguished contr ...

honoree. Subsequent books were ''In England Still'' (Arrowsmith, 1938), ''Walking on Gold'' (Messner, 1940), ''The Secret Brother'' (Holt, 1941), ''Last Semester'' (Holt, 1942), ''Second Shift'' (Holt, 1943) and ''Let's Go!'' (Holt, 1946). She also wrote an adult novel, ''Elsie Dinsmore on the Loose'' (Cape, 1930).

References

* ''Current Biography 1940'', pp. 203–204 * https://web.archive.org/web/20070609230125/http://www.buriedantiques.com/20th_century_authors/phyllis_crawford.htm

External links

* (mainly under 'Crawford, Phyllis, 1899-' without '1980', previous page of browse report)
Josie Turner
at LC Authorities, no catalog records 1899 births 1980 deaths American children's writers Newbery Honor winners Writers from Little Rock, Arkansas Date of death missing {{US-child-writer-stub