Eleanor Cameron, Contributing Author

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Eleanor Cameron

Author of children’s fantasy and science fiction and critic of children’s literature, Eleanor Cameron served on Cricket’s original Editorial Advisory Board and contributed articles.

Born in Canada in 1912, Cameron grew up in the United States and attended UCLA and the Art Center School of Los Angeles. In 1930, she began working for the Los Angeles Public Library. She later worked as a research librarian for the Los Angeles Board of Education and advertising companies.

Inspired by her son, Cameron began writing children's literature and published twenty books, 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.

Cameron caused a stir when she denounced Roald Dahl’s popular Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in The Horn Book Magazine, concluding:

"What I object to in Charlie is its phony presentation of poverty and its phony humor, which is based on punishment with overtones of sadism; its hypocrisy ... is epitomized in its moral ... that TV is horrible and hateful and time-wasting and that children should read good books instead, when in fact the book itself is like nothing so much as one of the more specious television shows."

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Part of an article by Eleanor Cameron, "books I wish you would read", in the first issue of Cricket, January, 1973

References

Cameron, Eleanor. Books I wish you would read. Cricket, January, 1973.

Cameron, Eleanor. McLuhan, Youth, and Literature: Part I. The Horn Book Magazine, October, 1972.

Carus, Marianne. 2003. Celebrate Cricket: 30 years of stories and art. Chicago: Cricket Books.

Cricket Media records, 1960-2022, Southern Illinois University Special Collections Research Center