Eleanor Cameron

The Mushroom Planet books began as a commission from an eight-year-old. Eleanor Cameron's son David asked for a story about a boy his own age who built a spaceship and flew off in it, and The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet followed in 1954. Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet (1956), illustrated by Robert Henneberger, sends a self-important young university assistant along for the trip. A Mystery for Mr. Bass (1960) carried pictures by Leonard Shortall, and Time and Mr. Bass (1967), illustrated by Fred H. Meise, closed a run of six. Cameron was born in Winnipeg in 1912, grew up in California, and spent the 1930s clerking in Los Angeles libraries before she published anything. Her standing rests as much on criticism as on fiction: the essay collections The Green and Burning Tree (1969) and The Seed and the Vision (1993), and a sustained attack on Roald Dahl that Dahl answered in print. The Court of the Stone Children took the 1974 National Book Award for children's literature. She died in 1996.