Goings-On @ the Graham Room

Eleanor Estes

Eleanor Rosenfeld Estes, award winning children’s author was born in West Haven, Connecticut in 1906.  She is considered one of America’s best-known and well-beloved authors of children’s literature.

Estes grew up in West Haven at the turn of the twentieth century.  The town of West Haven became the setting for the fictional New England town of Cranbury, home of the Moffat children.  The Moffats, was the first book in a series of four.  Ginger Pye, Newbery Award winner and Pinky Pye were also set in the town of Cranbury.  The city of West Haven, Estes once explained, “had everything a child could want, great vacant fields with daisies and clover and buttercups and an occasional peaceful cow.  There were marvelous trees to climb, fishing and clamming in the summertime, ice and snow and sliding down hills in the wintertime.” 

Estes’ mother was most influential in her becoming a lover of books.  Her mother was a great storyteller and often recited poetry to Eleanor and her siblings.

After graduating high school Eleanor was a children’s librarian at the New Haven Free Public Library.  Four years later she was promoted to head of the children’s department.  In 1931 she was awarded the Caroline M. Hewins scholarship for children librarians who afforded  Eleanor to attend the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY where she studied library science and also met her husband, Rice Estes.  In 1932 she began working at the New York Public Liberty until becoming a full-time writer after The Moffats was published in 1941.

In 1944 The Hundred Dresses was published.  This book articulates the prejudice that exists in literature for children.  A young Polish immigrant, Wanda is ridiculed by her classmates.  Wanda tells them that the faded blue dress she wears every day is one of a hundred dresses hanging in her closet.  Wanda’s classmates are left feeling extremely guilty for their mocking as it drives Wanda and her family away.

In the 1950’s Eleanor returns to the town of Cranbury, this time we are introduced to the Pye family.  Ginger Pye is awarded the Newbery Medal in 1952, along with the sequel Pinky Pye. 

Estes published nineteen books in her lifetime.  Estes gave a lasting contribution to children’s literature with her “emphasis on the positive, her celebration of the child’s spirit, her faith in the family, her fondness for small daily events and details and her wonder over the miraculous tricks life plays.”