Sheila Egoff, Children's Literature Critic

Sheila Egoff

Author of The Republic of Childhood, Sheila Egoff was a Canadian children’s literature critic who served on Cricket’s Editorial Advisory Board.

Born in 1918, Egoff earned a diploma from University of Toronto Library School in 1939, then earned her Bachelor of Arts from University of Toronto in 1947. From 1942 to 1957, she worked for the Toronto Public Library as the Children's Librarian and Reference Librarian. From 1957 to 1962, she served as an editor and Microfilm Project secretary at the Canadian Library Association Executive Office, then became one of the founding faculty members of the School of Librarianship at the University of British Columbia, where she developed five graduate courses in children's literature and youth library services.

Her literary analysis of contemporary international children's literature, Thursday's Child, won the Ralph R. Shaw American Library Association Award for library literature. As the chief editor of three editions of Only Connect: Readings on Children's Literature, Egoff established this resource of critical essays on children's literature as a respected and fundamental choice for children's literature courses around the world. Her study of fantasy, Worlds Within: Children's Fantasy from the Middle Ages to Today, is also an important resource.