About the Book
Contributions by Ann Mulloy Ashmore, Rudine Sims Bishop, Ruth B. Bottigheimer, Jennifer Brannock, Carolyn J. Brown, Ramona Caponegro, Lorinda Cohoon, Carol Edmonston, Paige Gray, Laura Hakala, Andrew Haley, Wm John Hare, Dee Jones, Allison G. Kaplan, Megan Norcia, Nathalie op de Beeck, Amy Pattee, Deborah Pope, Ellen Hunter Ruffin, Anita Silvey, Danielle Bishop Stoulig, Roger Sutton, Deborah D. Taylor, Eric L. Tribunella, Alexandra Valint, and Laura E. Wasowicz During the 1960s, a dedicated library science professor named Lena de Grummond initiated a letter-writing campaign to children's authors and illustrators requesting original manuscripts and artwork to share with her students. Now named after de Grummond, this archive at the University of Southern Mississippi has grown into one of the largest collections of historical and contemporary youth literature in North America with original contributions from more than 1,400 authors and illustrators, as well as over 185,000 volumes. The first book-length project on the collection, A de Grummond Primer: Highlights of the Children's Literature Collection provides a history of de Grummond's work and an introduction to major topics in the field of children's literature. With more than ninety full-color images, it highlights particular strengths of the archive, including extensive holdings of fairy tales, series books, nineteenth-century periodicals, Golden Age illustrated books, Mississippi and southern children's literature, nonfiction, African American children's literature, contemporary children's and young adult authors and illustrators, and more. The book includes contributions from literature and information science scholars, historians, librarians, and archivists--all noted experts on children's literature--and points to the exciting research possibilities of the archive. De Grummond could not have realized when she wrote to luminaries like H. A. and Margret Rey, Berta and Elmer Hader, Madeleine L'Engle, J. R. R. Tolkien, Lois Lenski, Garth Williams, and others that their correspondence and contributions would form the foundation for this extraordinary trove now visited by scholars from around the world. Such major authors and illustrators as Ezra Jack Keats, Richard Peck, Rosemary Wells, Angela Johnson, and John Green continued to donate content. In addition, curators, past and present, have acquired both historical and contemporary volumes of literature and criticism.
About the Author: Carolyn J. Brown is a retired teacher, writer, editor, and independent scholar. She is author of The Artist's Sketch: A Biography of Painter Kate Freeman Clark and the award-winning biographies A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty and Song of My Life: A Biography of Margaret Walker, all published by University Press of Mississippi. Find her at www.carolynjbrown.net. Ellen Hunter Ruffin, associate professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, has been curator of the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection since 2006. She has served on the Newbery Medal Committee, the Children's Literature Legacy Award Committee, and the Schneider Family Book Award Committee, among others. Eric L. Tribunella is professor of English at the University of Southern Mississippi, where he teaches children's and young adult literature. He is author of Melancholia and Maturation: The Use of Trauma in American Children's Literature; coauthor of Reading Children's Literature: A Critical Introduction; and editor of Edward Prime-Stevenson's Left to Themselves.
