Rachel Field Prayer for a Child
Hitty: Her First Hundred Years Calico Bush

Rachel Lyman Field, who was born on September 19, 1894, was a well-known author of popular children’s books during the 1920s and 1930s..

She grew up in New York City, was educated at Radcliffe. In 1929, she was the first woman to be awarded the John Newbery Medal for Hitty: Her First Hundred Years. Both Hitty and Calico Bush had Maine as their setting. Of Calico Bush, Ruth Hill Vigeurs wrote “a near-perfect re-creation of people and place in a story of courage, understated and beautiful.” In 1940, Prayer for a Child won the Caldecott Medal for Elizabeth Orton Jones’ illustrations.

She went on to write several adult novels, one of which, All This and Heaven Too, was a bestseller and was made into a movie starring Bette Davis and Charles Boyer.

Mrs. Field died on March 15, 1942, at age 47, at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, California, from pneumonia following a surgical operation.

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