Happy Little Family (A Dell Yearling Book)
Rebecca Caudill is the pen name of Mrs. James S. Ayers. Born in 1899, she writes about herself: One of eleven children, I was born on a rocky farm squeezed between the Black Mountains and the Poor Fork River in Harlan County, Kentucky (More About Junior Authors). A few years later the family moved to Tennessee. While she attended highschool, young Miss Caudill heard of college and decided to go to one. Having nary a penny to go on didn t strike me as an obstacle at all. She learned stenography, aided by an older sister, and with this skill, Miss Caudill was able to work her way through Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia, the first Wesleyan student ever to work for her education. After receiving a master s degree from Vanderbilt University, she proceeded to see the world, doing teaching, office work and editing in such varied places as Rio de Janeiro, Toronto, and Nashville, Tennessee; and traveling throughout Europe. In Turkey, on the verge of signing a magazine-editing contract, she met another editor, James S. Ayers. They married and were to have two children. They lived in Urbana, Illinois, for many years.Her books for younger children enlarge upon every-day pleasures and difficulties with a sense of wonder and freshness. Happy Little Family and the three further novels that trace the same family s life in succeeding years are fine representatives of the author s appeal to young readers. She has also written with charm for the youngest children in books like A Pocket Full of Cricket and A Certain Small Shepherd this last being a Christmas story, illustrated by William Pene du Bois. Mrs. Ayers died in 1985.--This text refers to an alternatePaperbackedition.