PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
ELIZABETH GEORGE SPEARE (1908-1994) won the 1959 Newbery Medal for The Witch of Blackbird Pond and the 1962 Newbery Medal for The Bronze Bow. She also received a Newbery Honor in 1983 for The Sign of the Beaver, and in 1989 she was presented with the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for her substantial and enduring contribution to children's literature. Of her beginings as a writer working on Witch of Blackbird Pond she said: Then one day I stumbled on a true story from New England history with a character who seemed to me an ideal heroine. Though I had my first historical novel almost by accident it soon proved to be an absorbing hobby.
The book has a lively plot and excellent characterizations. The background has every dimension of reality. The New York Times Rarely has a book taken us back into seventeenth-century life as this does. The New York Herald-Tribune Strong plot, fully realized characters, and convincing atmosphere distinguish this historical narrative. Booklist, ALA
