Betsy Byars
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Betsy Cromen Byars (born August 7, 1928) is an American children's author. In 1971, she won the Newbery Medal for her book Summer of the Swans.[1] She has also received a National Book Award, for The Night Swimmers (1980), and an Edgar Award, for Wanted...Mud Blossom (1991). In 1987 she received the Regina Medal, for lifetime achievement, from the Catholic Library Association.
She was born Betsy Cromer in Charlotte, North Carolina. When she was a child, she had two goats. One's name was Buttsy, and the other's was Billy. She attended Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, from 1946 to 1948, and graduated in 1950 from Queens College in Charlotte, with a bachelor's degree in English. She was going to be a mathmetician, but she couldn't do calculus. The only way she kept passing is because she would go up to her math teacher and say "can you start me off on this problem?" And in the math teacher's own enthusiasm, he would do the rest of the problem for her. She married Ed Byars the same year and began writing in the early 1960s while raising her children. Her first book, Clementine, was published in 1962. [2]
Her other novels include Cracker Jackson, The Cybil War, The Not-Just-Anybody Family, and The Burning Questions of Bingo Brown.[3]
Contents |
[edit] Bibliography
- Clementine (1962)
- The Dancing Camel (1965)
- Rama, the Gypsy Cat (1966)
- The Groober (1967)
- The Midnight Fox (1970)
- Summer of the Swans (1970)
- The Night Swimmers
- Wanted...Mud Blossom
- The Pinballs (1977)
- Cracker Jackson
- The Cybil War
- The Not-Just-Anybody Family
- The Burning Questions of Bingo Brown
- The Animal, The Vegetable, and John D. Jones
[edit] Trivia
- Byars is a licensed pilot.
[edit] References
- Autobiography. Retrieved July 2, 2006.
- Betsy Byars. Random House, Inc. Retrieved July 2, 2006.
- Books by Betsy Byars. Retrieved August 5, 2006.
