Sawyer, Ruth (1880–1970)

American writer and storyteller. Born on August 5, 1880, in Boston, Massachusetts; died on June 3, 1970; daughter of Francis Milton Sawyer and Ethelinda J. (Smith) Sawyer; attended Miss Brackett's School in New York; attended Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn, 1895–96; Garland Kindergarten Training School, 1900; graduated from Teachers College, Columbia University, B.S. in education, 1904; married Albert C. Durand, on June 4, 1911 (died 1967); children: David Durand (b. 1912); Margaret Durand McCloskey (b. 1916).

Received the John Newbery Medal of the American Library Association (1937), Lewis Carroll Shelf Award (1964), Regina Medal of the Catholic Library Association (1965), Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal of the American Library Association (1965); received Caldecott Honor Medals for The Christmas Anna Angel (1945) and Journey Cake, Ho! (1954).

Selected writings:

The Primrose Ring (1915); This Way to Christmas (1916); Seven Miles to Arden (1916); A Child's Yearbook (1917); Herself, Himself and Myself (1917); Doctor Danny (1918); Leerie (1920); The Silver Sixpence (1921); Gladiola Murphy (1923); The Tale of the Enchanted Bunnies (1923); Four Ducks on a Pond (1928); Folkhouse: The Autobiography of a Home (1932); The Luck of the Road (1934); Toño Antonio (1934); Gallant: The Story of Storm Veblen (1936); Picture Tales From Spain (1936); Roller Skates (1936); The Year of Jubilo (1940); The Least One (1941); The Long Christmas (1941); The Way of the Storyteller (1942); The Christmas Anna Angel (1944); This is the Christmas: A Serbian Folktale (1945); Old Con and Patrick (1946); The Little Red Horse (1950); Maggie Rose: Her Birthday Christmas (1952); Journey Cake, Ho! (1953); A Cottage for Betsy (1954); The Enchanted Schoolhouse (1956); The Year of the Christmas Dragon (1960); How to Tell a Story (1962); Daddles: The Story of a Plain Hound-Dog (1964); Joy to the World: Christmas Legends (1966); My Spain: A Storyteller's Year of Collecting (1967).

Ruth Sawyer was born in the Back Bay section of Boston in 1880, and had four older brothers. Sawyer's parents, Francis Milton Sawyer and Ethelinda Smith Sawyer , were members of the New England gentry. Ethelinda came from Lexington, Massachusetts, and Francis, an importer, boasted colonial ancestry as well. The family relocated to the Upper East Side of New York City in 1881. As a small child, Ruth was cared for by a French governess, and later by a nanny named Johanna; she grew extremely attached to this Irish woman from Donegal who shared a wealth of stories with her young charge. As she became older, Ruth attended Miss Brackett's School in New York.

Sawyer was 14 when her father died in 1894. The family retreated to Maine for a year, and then returned to New York City where Sawyer attended Brooklyn's Packer Collegiate Institute in 1895 and 1896. After graduating from the Garland Kindergarten Training School in Boston in 1900, she worked in Cuba, organizing kindergartens for orphans of the Spanish-American War. That project secured her a scholarship to Teachers College at Columbia University, where she studied folklore and indulged her love of storytelling. Receiving a B.S. in education in 1904, Sawyer secured employment as a professional storyteller with the New York Public Lecture Bureau. In that capacity, she spent two years relating stories to New York's foreign-born population and set up the first storytelling program for children at the New York Public Library. In 1905 and 1907, she made trips to Ireland to research articles for the New York Sun. There, she gleaned new material from Irish sennachies, the tellers of traditional Irish tales.

While Sawyer was a student at Columbia, she had become acquainted with an opthamologist, Dr. Albert C. Durand. The couple married on June 4, 1911, and moved to Ithaca, New York, where they raised two children, and Sawyer remained devoted to both writing and storytelling. Using her maiden name, as she would for all her works, she published several novels, including The Primrose Ring (1915) and Seven Miles to Arden (1916). Her children's books included This Way to Christmas (1916), A Child's Yearbook (1917), and The Tale of the Enchanted Bunnies (1923).

Between 1923 and 1933, Sawyer traveled the rural counties of New York, where she shared her stories with the local residents under the auspices of the Cornell University Extension Services. In 1931, she also traveled to Spain to collect folklore and met a Spanish boy who impressed her; on her return home, she wrote Toño Antonio, published in 1934. In the process, she befriended May Massee of Viking Press, who urged Sawyer to write more Spanish stories. She published Picture Tales from Spain in 1936 and My Spain in 1967.

Sawyer penned one of her most famous works, Roller Skates, in 1936. The autobiographical story relates one year in the life of a "freewheeling" young girl who explores New York City on roller skates while her parents are abroad. She embraces life to the fullest, befriending people from a broad spectrum of ethnicities and ages. While championing the spirit of children, Sawyer also injected a degree of realism then rarely seen in children's books when the heroine Lucinda must deal with the deaths (one a murder) of two friends. The book won the Newbery Medal of the American Library Association in 1937, and Lucinda made an appearance in a sequel, The Year of Jubilo (1940), later reissued as Lucinda's Year of Jubilo (1965).

Sawyer's stories are characterized by their focus on family relationships. Many of her books are set at Christmastime, including The Long Christmas (1941), Maggie Rose: Her Birthday Christmas (1952), and The Year of the Christmas Dragon (1960).

Sawyer's The Christmas Anna Angel, with illustrations by Kate Seredy , won the Caldecott Honor for illustrations in 1945. After Sawyer's daughter Margaret (McCloskey ) married the talented, whimsical illustrator Robert McCloskey, mother and son-in-law collaborated on Journey Cake, Ho!; it won a Caldecott Medal in 1954. In addition to her many children's stories, Sawyer wrote The Way of the Storyteller in 1942 to instruct others in the art of storytelling. The book, which offers samples for storytelling, became a classic guide for teachers, and in 1965 Sawyer made a recording entitled Ruth Sawyer: Storyteller.

Sawyer, who was particularly fond of sailing, fishing, and berry-picking, retired with her husband to Gull Rock, in Hancock, Maine, in 1946. They spent their winters in Florida and later moved to Boston, where Sawyer continued her storytelling activities at the Boston Public Library. The couple's final move was to the Hancock House Nursing Home in Lexington, Massachusetts, where Durand died in 1967. Sawyer died of a gastrointestinal hemorrhage on June 3, 1970.

sources:

Contemporary Authors. Vols. 73–76. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1978.

Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 22. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1983.

Kunitz, Stanley J., and Howard Haycraft, eds. Twentieth Century Authors. NY: H.W. Wilson, 1942.

Sicherman, Barbara, and Carol Hurd Green, eds. Notable American Women: The Modern Period. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1980.

Gloria Cooksey , freelance writer, Sacramento, California