Butter at the Old Price: The Autobiography of Marguerite De Angeli.

My earliest memory is of morning stillness, the sun creeping through a little alcove touching the edge of a barrel-top and shining on boxes that stood about the room as if we had just moved in. It must have been Sunday, though I wouldn’t have known that any more than I would have known that the exciting colored chalks in their neat box were called pastels. I only knew that they were enticing and that I yielded to the temptation to try them.’ So begins the story of one of the pioneers of American children’s book publishing. Marguerite Lofft de Angeli was born on March 14, 1889 in Lapeer, a small town in northern Michigan which she introduced to children in Copper-toed Boots. When she was thirteen, her family moved to Philadelphia, and the history of that city and the colorful customs of the surrounding countryside were later used as background material for several of her books. Although she had studied to become a concert contralto, she gave up that career when John de Angeli persuaded her to marry him and raise a family instead. While her children were young, Mrs. de Angeli began to take drawing lessons and in 1935 her first children’s book, Ted and Nina Go to the Grocery Store, was published. This first book was based on the activities of two of her five children. As the years passed and her family increased to include thirteen grandchildren and one great grandchild, they in turn have served as models for such de Angeli books as Just Like David. The awards Mrs. de Angeli has received are many. In 1946 Bright April was named an Honor Book in the New York Herald Tribune’s book awards. In 1950, The Door in the Wall received the Newbery Medal and in 1961 it won a Lewis Carroll Shelf Award. And the qualities that Mrs. de Angeli has been honored for are the same ones that infuse this book–honesty, curiosity, humor, an underlying sense of values, and above all genuine warmth. Everyone who has a concern for children’s literature will delight in reading this lively account of a life full of interesting events and people, and in learning of the particular places and personalities that inspired Mrs. de Angeli’s many popular books.