Elizabeth Coatsworth has been a well-known name in children’s literature for many decades. She was born in 1893 and her first book was published in 1927 just as separate departments for children’s books were being established in American publishing. Her last book for children was published in 1975, eleven years before her death in 1986. In 1931 she won the Newbery Medal for The Cat Who Went to Heaven, a book inspired by her many travels and her “painter’s eye for color and form” that had been so evident in her earlier books of poetry for adults. Her fellow Vassar classmate and the first children’s book editor at Macmillan’s, Louise Seaman Bechtel, wrote, “She took on her journeys a brilliant mind, a flair for the strange and picturesque, a lively interest in all kinds of people. She gradually discovered, in the years that followed, many ways to interpret her emotional and intellectual response to far places, in prose and verse.” (Newbery Medal Books: 1922-1955). Though this Newbery Award title has remained in print, the author became known and loved by many readers more through her succeeding work—including the stories and often-cited poetry in the five volumes about Sally.