Elizabeth Yates
Elizabeth Yates was a prominent children's author born in 1905 in Buffalo, New York. Her formative years on a working farm instilled in her a deep appreciation for values like productivity and order, which are reflected in her writing. Yates began crafting stories during her childhood and pursued a writing career after moving to New York City at the age of twenty. She published her first book, "High Holiday," in 1938, inspired by a tour of Switzerland with English children. After moving back to the U.S. and settling in New Hampshire, Yates gained acclaim for her works, notably winning the Newbery Medal for "Amos Fortune, Free Man" in 1951. Over her career, she received multiple awards, including the Jane Addams Children's Book Award and honorary doctorates for her contributions to juvenile literature. In addition to her writing, Yates was involved in teaching, lecturing, and environmental advocacy, and her books have been translated into several languages, highlighting their global appeal.
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Elizabeth Yates
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- Born: December 6, 1905
- Birthplace: Buffalo, New York
- Died: July 29, 2001
- Place of death: Concord, New Hampshire
Biography
Born in 1905 in Buffalo, New York, prolific children’s author Elizabeth Yates grew up on a working farm, with livestock and crops. The experiences of her rural childhood gave her a deep appreciation for productivity, practicality, purpose and order—values which appear throughout her writing.
As a child, Yates would devise stories while taking long rides on her horse Bluemouse, and she committed to a writing career early on. When she was twenty, she moved to New York City to pursue this dream and found consistent but uninspiring work reviewing books and writing short stories on commission. After marrying William McGreal, she relocated to England. A tour of Switzerland accompanied by three English children provided the inspiration for her first published book, High Holiday, released in Great Britain in 1938. Yates and her husband returned to the United States in 1939, settling on a farm in New Hampshire, where she would live until her death in 2001.
In addition to their popularity with young readers, Yates’s books received many critical honors, most notably the 1951 Newbery Medal for Amos Fortune, Free Man, which also received the 1953 William Allen White Children’s Book Award. She also received the 1943 New York Herald Tribune Spring Book Festival Juvenile Award for Patterns on the Wall. In 1953, Yates was presented the Boys’ Clubs of America Gold Medal for A Place for Peter; in 1955, the United States’ section of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom gave her its Jane Addams Children’s Book Award for Rainbow ’Round the World. She was the recipient of the Sara Josepha Hale Award from the Richards Free Library in Newport, New Hampshire, in 1970; the award recognizes “a distinguished body of work written in the field of literature and letters.”
Although she had little formal education, Yates received many honorary doctorates in recognition of her contributions to juvenile literature, most notably from the University of New Hampshire in 1967. She taught at writing conferences for the University of New Hampshire, University of Connecticut, and Indiana University, served as a trustee of the Peterborough Town Library, and was an executive board member for the New Hampshire Association for the Blind. Her books have been translated into Dutch, Japanese, Hebrew, Bengali, German, and Sinhalese. In addition to writing children’s books, Yates contributed many articles to periodicals and was an active lecturer and conference organizer, as well as an avid environmentalist.