Eleanor Cameron

Eleanor Frances Butler Cameron (1912 - 1996) was a Canadian children's author who spent most of her life in California. Born in Winnipeg, Canada in 1912, her family then moved to South Charleston, Ohio when she was 3 years old. Her father farmed and her mother ran a hotel. After three years, they moved to Berkeley, California. Her parents divorced a few years later. At 16, she moved with her mother and stepfather to Los Angeles. She credits her English mother's love of story telling for her inspiration to write and make up stories.

She attended UCLA and the Art Center School of Los Angeles. In 1930, she started working at the Los Angeles Public Library and later worked as a research librarian for the Los Angeles Board of Education and two different advertising companies. She married Ian Cameron, a printmaker and publisher, in 1934 and the couple had a son, David, in 1944.

Her first book came out in 1950, based on her experience as a librarian. It was well received by critics, but didn't sell well. She did not start writing children's books until her son asked him to write one starring him as a character. this resulted in her popular series The Mushroom Planet.

With the success of the Mushroom Planet books, Cameron focused on writing for children. Between 1959 and 1988 she produced 12 additional children's novels, including The Court of the Stone Children (1973) and the semi-autobiographical five book Julia Redfern series (1971–1988). She won the National Book Award for Court of the Stone Children in 1973, and was a runner up for To The Green Mountains in 1979.

In addition to her fiction work, Cameron wrote two books of criticism and reflection on children's literature. The first, The Green and Burning Tree, was released in 1969 and led an increased profile for Cameron in the world of children's literature. Throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s Cameron worked as a traveling speaker and contributor to publications such as The Horn Book Magazine, Wilson Library Bulletin, and Children's Literature in Education. She was also a member of the founding editorial board for the children's magazine Cricket, which debuted in 1973. In 1972 she and Roald Dahl exchanged barbs across three issues of The Horn Book, a magazine devoted to critical discussions of children's and young adult fiction. Her second book of essays, The Seed and the Vision: On the Writing and Appreciation of Children's Books, came out in 1993. It is her final published book.

From late 1967 until her death Cameron made her home in Pebble Beach, California. She died in hospice in Monterey, California on October 11, 1996 at the age of 84.[