Eleanor Cameron

Eleanor Cameron
Cameron and Leonard Wibberley in 1965
Born	Eleanor Frances Butler March 23, 1912 Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Died	October 11, 1996 Monterey, California, USA
Occupation	Writer, librarian
Nationality	Canada
Period	1950–1996
Genres	Children's literature

Eleanor Frances (Butler) Cameron (1912–1996) was a children's author and critic. She published 20 books in her lifetime, including The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet (1954) and its sequels, a collection of critical essays called The Green and Burning Tree (1969), and The Court of the Stone Children (1973), which won the U.S. National Book Award in category Children's Books^[1]

Biography

Eleanor Cameron was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in Canada on March 23, 1912. Her family moved to Ohio when she was three years old, and then to Berkeley, California when she was six. Some time later, her parents divorced. At age 16, she moved with her mother and stepfather to Los Angeles. Cameron studied at UCLA and the Art Center School of Los Angeles. She joined the Los Angeles Public Library in 1930 and later worked as a research librarian for advertising agencies and other Los Angeles-based companies. She married Ian Cameron, a printmaker and publisher, in 1934 and the two had a son, David.^[2]

Her first book, The Unheard Music, was based on her experience as a librarian and was positively received. Cameron did not turn to writing children's books until her son David asked her to write a space story featuring him as the main character.^[3] That book, The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet (1954), proved to be very popular, spawning four sequels and two short stories.

From late 1969 until her death she made her home in Pebble Beach, California. She died in hospice in Monterey, California on October 11, 1996 at the age of 84.^[4]

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Controversy

From October 1972 to October 1973 a controversy spawned by Cameron over Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory embroiled the pages of The Horn Book Magazine.^[5][6] In a the first of a three part essay titled "McLuhan, Youth, and Literature", Cameron labeled Charlie "one of the most tasteless books ever written for children," finding it to be "sadistic" and "phony."^[7] She was especially chagrined at its use as a classroom read-aloud. Dahl replied in the February 1973 issue of Horn Book. He wrote that she was entitled to her opinion, but he felt that she had attacked his character as well. He also scoffed at her recommendation that teachers find better literature to share with their students: "I would dearly like to see Ms. Cameron trying to read Little Women, or Robinson Crusoe for that matter to a class of today's children. This lady is completely out of touch with reality. She would be howled out of the classroom."^[8]

In her essay, Cameron also decried the Oompa-Loompas, who were portrayed as abused, half-naked, African pygmy slaves. The pictures and descriptions of the Oompa-Loompas in Charlie were revised by Dahl and his publisher Knopf for the 1973 edition to cast the Oompa-Loompas as dwarves from Loompaland whom Willy Wonka adores.^[5] Though this appeared to be a direct result of Cameron's criticism, the brief amount of time between the criticism and the publication of the revised edition of Charlie book makes it more likely that the changes had already been put in motion by the time "McLuhan, Youth, and Literature" was published.^[9]

Legacy

Besides winning the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, Cameron's other awards included National Book Award runner-up in 1976 for To the Green Mountains and the Kerlan Award in 1985 for her body of work.

Since 1992 Super-Con-Duck-Tivity has presented the Eleanor Cameron Award for Middle Grades, one of its three annual Golden Duck Awards for Excellence in Children's Science Fiction, to the author of an English-language novel written for elementary school children (grades 2 to 6). It is funded largely by DucKon, a yearly science fiction convention in the Chicago region.^[10]

Mushroom Planet series

The Mushroom Planet novels are set on Earth and on its tiny, habitable second moon—in orbit 50,000 miles above the planet but invisible without a special telescope filter. The "Mushroom Planet", also called Basidium, is covered in various types of mushrooms and is populated by small green people, some of whom have immigrated to Earth.

• The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet (1954)
• Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet (1956)
• Mr. Bass's Planetoid (1958)
• A Mystery for Mr. Bass (1960)
• Jewels from the Moon and the Meteor That Couldn't Stay (1964)
• Time and Mr. Bass (1967)

Julia Redfern series

• A Room Made of Windows (1971)
• Julia and the Hand of God (1977)
• That Julia Redfern (1982)
• Julia's Magic (1984)
• The Private Worlds of Julia Redfern (1989)

Other books

• The Unheard Music. 1950.

• The Terrible Churnadryne. 1959.
• The Mysterious Christmas Shell. 1961.
• The Beast With the Magical Horn. 1963.

• A Spell is Cast. 1964.

• The Green and Burning Tree: On the Writing and Enjoyment of Children's Books. 1969.

• The Court of the Stone Children. 1973.
• To the Green Mountains. 1975.
• Beyond Silence. 1980

• The Seed and the Vision: On the Writing and Appreciation of Children's Books. 1993.

References

External links

• Eleanor Cameron at the Internet Book List
• Eleanor Cameron at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Eleanor Cameron at Library of Congress Authorities, with 26 catalog records