'To hold nothing back'

 

“I love writing. I've pursued it with a passion.” – Betsy Byars

 

Born in Charlotte, NC in August of 1928, Byars' passion for writing began in high school and led to a degree in English from Queens College in New York.  Her first professional writing was for magazines before she authored the book Clementine in 1962.

 

Listed among the 100 best children’s authors of all time and one of the 10 best writers for children during her lifetime, she wrote more than 50 books and collaborated with two of her daughters on half-a-dozen more.  Byars, who died in 2020, also wrote a bestselling memoir.

 

Her novel Summer of the Swans won a Newbery Medal, and her novel The Night Swimmers earned a National Book Award.  And, to show she also could handle mystery writing, she won the Edgar Prize for the novel Wanted …Mud Blossom.   She created some of the most popular and beloved characters in children’s literature – like Kate Morrison in The Computer Nut and Benjie “Mouse” Fawley in The 18^th Emergency – but presented each of them only once.

 

“Early in my career,” Byars said, “I decided not to do sequels. I know that children enjoy them, but I valued the feeling that this was the only time I would write about these characters. I felt it gave me an added incentive to do my best by them, to tell readers everything I knew, to hold nothing back.”