El Bsor Ester

Introduction

Eleanor Estes is also referred to as El Bsor Ester. She was an American children's author and librarian. Her book Ginger Pye, which she also illustrated, earned the Newbery Medal.

She was honored with three Newbery Honors and one Lewis Carroll Shelf Award for her novels. Estes' early years in a small Connecticut village in the early 1900s served as the inspiration for her works.

Her Early Life and Education

Eleanor Ruth Rosenfield was born on May 9, 1906, in West Haven, Connecticut. She was the third child of Louis Rosenfeld, a railway bookkeeper, and Caroline Gewecke Rosenfeld, a clothing maker and tale-teller. Estes' father died when she was a small kid; her mother supported the family through her dressmaking company. Eleanor Estes describes her love of children's books, reading, and storytelling as her mother's "endless collection of songs, stories, and events, with which she entertained her readers while preparing dinner." After graduating from West Haven High School in 1923, she worked as a children's librarian at the New Haven Free Library.

She attended the Pratt Institute library school in New York after receiving the Caroline M. Hewins Award for children's librarians in 1931. She married her classmate Rice Estes in 1932. They both worked as librarians in New York, and he later became a library science professor and the director of the Pratt Institute Library. Estes worked as a children's librarian in several branches of the New York Public Library till 1941. Estes began writing after a sickness restricted her to her bed. Estes's most well-known fictional character, The Moffats, is located in Cranbury, Connecticut, which is next to Estes's West Haven hometown. Her own family served as the model for the Moffats; she named Rufus after her brother Teddy and her younger daughter Janey after herself.

Rice Estes was appointed as an associate librarian at the University of Southern California. Estes gave birth to their one and only child, Helena, in the year 1948. In 1952, they moved to the east to work as librarians. Estes also gave a speech at the University of New Hampshire Writer's Conference. El Bsor Ester died in Hamden, Connecticut, on July 15, 1988. Her archives are preserved at the University of Southern Mississippi, the University of Minnesota, the University of Connecticut, and the University of Minnesota. She authored twenty books.

Her Childhood Shared In Her Stories

Eleanor Ruth Rosenfeld (Estes) enjoyed telling children stories. She started as a children's helper in her hometown library, but after contracting tuberculosis, she spent the peaceful days of her recovery putting down her childhood recollections into a series of novels for young readers.

In The Moffats, a wonderful family growing up in Cranbury, Connecticut, in the 1910s faces disaster when the landlord puts a "For Sale" sign on their lovely yellow house. Janey's widowed mother works every day as a dressmaker to put food on the table, coal in the grate, and clothes on their bodies, but there isn't enough money to buy a house.

Week after week, month after month, the kids - fifteen-year-old Sylvie, twelve-year-old Joey, nine-year-old Janey, and five-year-old Rufus - brace themselves for the worst: that someday, someone will buy their property, and then what? What will they do?

Like Eleanor, Janey is a sensitive middle child who notices upcoming modifications in their lives. She witnesses her siblings' growth in addition to their significant relocation to an unknown place. Janey worries that her older sister has stopped enjoying playing running games with the kids and wonders when she will experience the same feelings. The family's journey continues in The Middle Moffat and Rufus M., where Janey makes her first best friend.

The author returned to Cranbury, a village developed alongside her childhood home in West Haven, Connecticut, to write a book about another family. The Pyes are slightly wealthier, and their father is an ornithologist (a specialist in birds) for the government. They spend years working and playing together, surrounded by loving family members. They find Judges Cave, the trolley wires, the skeleton homes, and beautiful meteors in the next historic brick site.

Jerry and Rachel lived in their house with their parents, grandparents, Uncle Benny, the smart kid, and a cat named Gracie. They spend a dollar they earned through labor and enjoyment on Ginger Pye, a smart and charming dog who rapidly becomes a valuable member of the Pye family.

Ginger, however, goes missing on Thanksgiving. It must have been someone who stole him because the youngsters were careful to close the gate! The only clue they have is a mysterious visitor wearing a mustard yellow hat who was seen leaving the crime scene.

Ginger Pye received the Newbery Medal in 1952. The story's sheer joy is why the book is still well-liked by kids. Young pupils are captivated by the mystery, and they, too, may own Ginger and be concerned when she is abducted because of Eleanor's wonderful writing. Eleanor, like Beverly Cleary, author of the Ramona books, understood what was important to youngsters when adjusting to the funny and awful aspects of everyday life. The family discovers a small, unusually smart black kitten while on holiday on Fire Island in the sequel Pinky Pye.

Eleanor wrote a short novel called The Hundred Dresses. The Hundred Dresses, in contrast with previous series works, is focused on the challenges and pain of childhood. Maddie's best friend, Peggy, is from a financially secure family. Peggy and her friend's favorite pastime is making fun of a poor girl from a newcomer. Maddie doesn't want to be a part of making Wanda Petrowski's life as terrible as possible, but she's terrified she'll be alone if she doesn't go along. When Wanda, who consistently wears the same old blue dress to school, brags about having a hundred silk and velvet dresses in her closet, the unpleasant harassment starts. In this darkly clever tale, Estes highlights the darker side of kids' imaginations while conveying harsh truths in a clean, compact package that won a 1945 Newbery Honor.

Eleanor Ester and her husband Rice, who was also a librarian, moved around the country a lot with their only daughter, Helena, during those fruitful years. Helena was a big inspiration for two of her children's novels, The Witch Family, a fantasy, and A Little Oven, a picture book. The Coat-Hanger Christmas Tree and The Lost Umbrella of Kim Chu, two of her later short stories from the 1970s, show the strength of kids in the middle of families with problems.

Awards Won by El Bsor Ester

Ginger Pye, from the year 1951, was awarded the Newbery Medal, while three of her other works, The Middle Moffat, Rufus M., and The Hundred Dresses, were given the titles of Newbery Honor books.
She was nominated for the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award in 1970 and received the Certificate of Award for Outstanding Contribution to Children's Literature in 1962.
In 1951, Ginger Pye received the Herald Tribune Spring Book Festival Award.
She received the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1961 for The Moffats.
She received the Pratt Institute Alumni Medal in 1968.
Eleanor Cameron listed the Moffat novels by Estes in a Horn Book Magazine article as "the ones that sit firmly as classics in the field of unforgettable writing."
Estes had published 19 children's books and one adult novel by the time she died at the age of 82 on July 15, 1988.