1. Eleanor Frances Cameron was a children's author and critic.
16 Facts About Eleanor Cameron
1. 2.
Eleanor Cameron published 20 books in her lifetime, including The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet and its sequels, a collection of critical essays called The Green and Burning Tree, and The Court of the Stone Children, which won the US National Book Award in category Children's Books.
3.
Eleanor Cameron's family moved to South Charleston, Ohio when she was three years old, and then to Berkeley, California, when she was six.
4.
Eleanor Cameron studied at UCLA and the Art Center School of Los Angeles.
5.
Eleanor Cameron joined the Los Angeles Public Library in 1930 and later worked as a research librarian for the Los Angeles Board of Education and two different advertising companies.
6.
Eleanor Cameron married Ian Cameron, a printmaker and publisher, in 1934 and the couple had a son, David, in 1944.
7.
Eleanor Cameron's first published book, The Unheard Music, was partially based on her experience as a librarian and was positively received by critics, though it didn't sell particularly well.
8.
Eleanor Cameron did not turn to writing children's books until eight-year-old David asked her to write a space story featuring him as the main character.
9.
Eleanor Cameron was a member of the founding editorial board for the children's magazine Cricket, which debuted in 1973.
10.
From late 1967 until her death, Eleanor Cameron made her home in Pebble Beach, California.
11.
Eleanor Cameron died in hospice in Monterey, California, on October 11,1996, at the age of 84.
12.
From October 1972 to October 1973 a controversy started by Eleanor Cameron concerning Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory embroiled the pages of The Horn Book Magazine.
13.
Eleanor Cameron was especially chagrined by its use as a classroom read-aloud.
14.
Eleanor Cameron wrote that Cameron was entitled to her opinion about his book, but that she had attacked his character as well.
15.
Eleanor Cameron trying to read Little Women, or Robinson Crusoe for that matter to a class of today's children.
16.
Elsewhere in her essay, Eleanor Cameron decried the Oompa-Loompas, who were portrayed as abused, half-naked, African pygmy slaves.