Eleanor Estes

Born Eleanor Ruth Rosenfield in West Haven, Connecticut, Estes was the third child. Her father, Louis Rosenfeld, was a bookkeeper for a railway; her mother, Caroline Gewecke Rosenfeld, was a seamstress and story teller. Her father died when Estes was young, and her mother's dressmaking provided for the family.[2]^:267 Eleanor Estes attributes her love of reading, children's literature, and storytelling to her parent's fondness for books, and her mother's "inexhaustible supply of songs, stories, and anecdotes, with which she entertained us with while cooking dinner."[3] In 1923, after graduating from West Haven High School, she trained at the New Haven Free Library, and became a children's librarian there.[4]^:147

In 1931 Estes won the Caroline M. Hewins scholarship for children's librarians, which allowed her to study at the Pratt Institute library school in New York.[5] In 1932 she married fellow student Rice Estes. They both worked as librarians throughout New York, and he later became a professor of library science and the head of the Pratt Institute Library.[3][6] Estes worked as a children's librarian in various branches of the New York Public Library, until 1941.[3] Estes began writing when tuberculosis left her confined to her bed. Her best known fictional characters, the Moffats, live in Cranbury, Connecticut, which is Estes’ hometown of West Haven. She based the Moffats after her family, including patterning younger daughter Janey after herself, and basing Rufus on her brother, Teddy.[7]

Eleanor based the story The Hundred Dresses on her real life experience as the girl who (unbeknownst to Peggy) received Peggy's hand-me-down dresses. She felt so guilty for not having defended the Wanda Petronski character in real life, that she wrote the story as both an exercise to assuage her guilt, and to encourage others to stand up against bullies.[8][9]

The Esteses had one child, Helena, born in Los Angeles in 1948, where Rice Estes was assistant librarian at the University of Southern California. In 1952 they moved back to the East coast, where she lived until her death.[4]^:151 Besides writing and working as a librarian, Estes also taught at the University of New Hampshire Writer's Conference.[10]

Eleanor Estes died July 15, 1988 in Hamden, Connecticut. Her papers are held at the University of Southern Mississippi,[6] and University of Minnesota.[5] She wrote 20 books.

Estes's book Ginger Pye (1951) won the Newbery Medal. Three of her books were Newbery Honor books: The Middle Moffat, Rufus M., and The Hundred Dresses.[11] In addition The Moffats won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1961.[12] Estes also received the Certificate of Award for Outstanding Contribution to Children's Literature from the New York Association for Supervision of Curriculum Development in 1968.[2] She was awarded the Pratt Institute Alumni Medal in 1968.[13]^:318 In 1970 she was nominated for the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award.[7]

According to reviewer Carolyn Shute, Estes had the "ability to distill the very essence of childhood."[13]^:319 Anita Silvey said she possessed a "rare gift for depicting everyday experiences from the fresh perspective of childhood."[14] Estes is primarily recognized as a writer of family stories, and as one who "shaped and broadened that subgenre's tradition", primarily through her "seemingly artless style".[4]^:147 Eleanor Cameron, in an article for The Horn Book Magazine, included Estes' Moffat books among "those that sit securely as classics in the realm of memorable literature".[15]

• The Moffats (1941)
• The Middle Moffat (1942)
• The Sun and the Wind and Mr. Todd (1943)
• Rufus M. (1943)
• The Hundred Dresses (1944)
• The Echoing Green (1947)
• Sleeping Giant and Other Stories (1948)
• Ginger Pye (1951)
• A Little Oven (1955)
• Pinky Pye (1958)
• The Witch Family (1960)
• Small but Wiry (1963)
• The Alley (1964)
• The Lollipop Princess (1967)
• Miranda the Great (1967)
• The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode (1972)
• The Coat-Hanger Christmas Tree (1973)
• The Lost Umbrella of Kim Chu (1978)
• The Moffat Museum (1983)
• The Curious Adventures of Jimmy McGee (1987)

Sources

• Book Web Help page
• "A Childhood Shared". Kids Library Point. Retrieved 3 May 2012.

• Eleanor Estes at Library of Congress Authorities—with 42 catalog records
• Eleanor Estes at Find a Grave