Ellis Credle

Ellis Credle (August 18, 1902 – February 21, 1998) was an American writer. She wrote a number of books for children and young adults, some of which she also illustrated. Credle (which is pronounced "cradle") is best known as the creator of the acclaimed children's book Down Down the Mountain and other stories set in the South. While the most successful of her work has been called inspirational, some other stories were controversial for her depiction of African Americans.

Credle was raised in North Carolina, but broke into writing after years of struggle in New York City. She spent the last half of her long life residing in Mexico, where some of her later stories are set. Over the course of her career she had the opportunity to collaborate with her husband, who was a professional photographer, and with her son, who in time became a well-known archeologist.

Biography Early life

In North Carolina Credle was born on August 18, 1902, on the Pamlico Sound, in Hyde County, North Carolina. She would call her birthplace "the somber low country of North Carolina". She was the daughter of Zach, a soybean farmer, and Bessie Credle (née Cooper). She said that although her home was far from any railroad and isolated by swamps and forests, she perceived herself at the time as being "right in the middle of things". Her childhood also included time spent on her grandfather's tobacco plantation; on North Carolina's coastal islands; and in the Appalachian Highlands. As an author, she later drew upon her early experiences in these regions when designing her characters and settings.

At age sixteen, Credle was admitted to Louisburg College, the same school her grandmother had attended during the Civil War. There she became editor-in-chief of the school literary magazine, "The Collegian". After graduating in 1922 she went to the Blue Ridge Mountains to teach history and French at the Forest City High School. She taught for two years. Unfortunately, she was very unhappy in this work, finding the country "majestic" but the work "uncongenial".

Credle said, "If I had to choose the circumstance that was most important in turning me toward a career of writing and illustrating for children, I should say it was the fact that I saw myself running out of money during the year that I had chosen to study art in New York. To piece out of my foundering financial situation I got a job as part-time governess for two children. One of my duties was to read to them from their library of a hundred or more books for children. This gave me a background in the subject, and I soon discovered that the children preferred the stories I made up myself. These were based on things that had happened to me on my grandfather's tobacco plantation and also adventures on the Carolina outer islands. I began to write these tales down with the idea of finding a publisher".

Another source says that Credle, while looking for work as an illustrator, was advised by an editor to consider writing and illustrating children's literature. Credle related that she then went to the New York Public Library "and read every children’s book they had". Deciding that few of these books were really stories, she determined to create a new kind of book for children using the folk tales and legends of North Carolina. She is said to have "concocted fairy tales and garnered rejection slips" before turning her focus to more realistic stories based in her own background. Credle said, "My first five tries at fiction were all rejected". In 1947, General Douglas MacArthur asked that the book be translated into Japanese for the children of the occupation.

A contrary view holds the tale to a higher standard of real-world authenticity. Keystone Folklore Quarterly claimed that the story actually "conveys little of the hard life and isolation of the mountaineers". The same source characterizes the children, Hetty and Hank, as "unbelievably optimistic".

Credle was uplifted by her book's acceptance for publication. With great optimism for her future—and the advance royalties in hand—Credle embarked on a cruise to South America. On that journey she met photographer Charles de Kay Townsend. The couple married on April 13, 1936, in Kings, New York. Afterwards, rather than settling down, they "moved about a great deal".

Bader surmised that Credle's next book about a black child, The Flop-Eared Hound (1938), demonstrated that author and publisher had bowed to a growing sentiment against these caricature and dialect issues. The book describes the life of a hard-working sharecropper family as they decide whether to keep a young hound who shows up at their cabin. Credle and Townsend presented the story narrated in standard English with extraordinary photographs documenting details of daily life—washing clothes, getting water from the well, plowing, fishing, gathering persimmons, picking and drying cotton, feeding pigs, cooking, reading the Bible, and riding to church in a buggy. The photography raises the book from a simple children's book to a documentation of African American life in the rural South in the 1930s.

As an illustrator Ellis Credle's artwork drew a comparison to Thomas Benton's in terms of "the undulating line, the surface agitation", as well as its "restless energy". The artwork in Down Down The Mountain is further praised for an appropriately "rough-hewn, deep-cleft, unfinished quality". The choices of blue and brown for the artwork and of brown again for the printed text are also noted for imparting a cheerful, individual look.

Credle has also been credited for the historical accuracy of her drawings. The setting and the attire of characters in Down Down the Mountain, for example, "present authentic material folk culture" of the Appalachian region around the time of the Great Depression. A drawing of the mother making soap while "dressed in the traditional manner" as well as an illustration of the interior of the cabin, supported by a long description, are specifically praised.

Acclaim was not universal. One reviewer criticised her work on Caleb's Luck, "Credle's illustrations... depict the mountain culture but do not extend or interpret the text. Her illustrations for her own stories are more successful".

As a writer Even as her career in children's literature flourished, Credle found it difficult to conceive of plots that were fresh enough to satisfy her editors. However, she described children "don't mind if the plot is time-worn [because] their experience doesn't include many plots". She did acknowledge that little children "require well-plotted stories" and will "lose interest if one wanders from the main line and begins dillying and dallying with words". by Maud Lindsay and Caleb's Luck (Grosset & Dunlap, 1942) by Laura Benét. Tall Tales from the High Hills, and Other Stories (1957), which is summarized as "twenty old tales that have been passed down generation to generation by the mountain folk of the South", was written by Credle, with artwork by Richard Bennett. She also worked with her husband, Charles de Kay Townsend, on books including: Johnny and his Mule; Mexico: Land of Hidden Treasure; and My Pet Peepelo. She wrote, and he provided the photographs. Her son Richard illustrated her Little Pest Pico (T. Nelson, 1969).

Later life Credle had visited Mexico in the early 1930s and had a positive experience. In 1947, she and her family moved to Guadalajara Mexico, where she and her husband continued to reside for the next thirty-eight years. Although the move was called a retirement, she carried on with writing, often basing stories in Mexico. She never found the level of success she had attained with her tales of the Blue Ridge country. After her husband died, she moved to the shores of Lake Chapala.

"I have never regretted coming to Mexico,” Credle said. “I have always felt happy, at home, and strangely safe here". She returned to the United States on occasion to visit her son in Chicago. She was also invited to the States at times to lecture on North Carolina folklore. At one such meeting held for librarians, she is said to have played guitar and sung songs from her childhood.

Legacy Some of her papers are kept in the Special Collections and University Archives of the University of Oregon Libraries. The small "Ellis Credle Papers" collection contains primarily sketches from her books and correspondence with her editors, along with a few handwritten manuscript drafts.

In addition to the enduring popularity of her books, another aspect of Credle's legacy is found in the work of her son, Richard Fraser Townsend. Townsend is an eminent authority on the art, symbolism and archeology of the ancient Americas and several other world cultures. He has acknowledged that the roots of his interest in understanding a new culture and geography reach back to his family's 1947 move to Mexico. Young Richard began exploring with his parents the "monuments and landscapes" of his new home. Ellis Credle delved into Mexico's past and came to write her Mexico, Land of Hidden Treasure (for which Charles Townsend provided the photographs). In time her son became the head of the Department of African Art and Indian Art of the Americas at the Art Institute of Chicago, and author and editor of many books of his own.

Partial bibliography Down Down the Mountain (1934) Across the Cotton Patch (1935) Little Jeems Henry (1936) Pig-O-Wee (1936) Pepe and the Parrot (1937) The Flop-Eared Hound (1938) That Goat That Went to School (1940) Janey's Shoes (1944) - "This hasn't the directness of most of Credle's books, but many children love the might-be-true stories of the past... It's a story with a moral -- but not too obviously so". Johnny and His Mule (1946) My Pet Peepelo (1948) - "Small listeners will like the pictures ... Older children will find the documentary photographs informative and entertaining, with detail which gives them more than usual appeal". Here Comes the Showboat (1949) - "This is one of the best books out of the south and dealing with the south that we've had for some time. And one of Ellis Credle's most successful books". The adventures of Tittletom (1949) - "It's too bad that there are a number of things about this little story that are not good ... All in all, as you can see, not as satisfactory as her previous books". Big Doin's on Razorback Ridge (1956) - "Reminiscent of Ellis Credle's best stories...". Tall Tales from the High Hills and Other Stories (1957) - "There is real cracker-barrel gusto to this round up. ... Some are suitable to read aloud to younger children -- others will appeal to older youngsters". Big fraid, little fraid : a folktale (1964) - "The simple, slapstick comedy is good for a few hearty laughs. The author's illustrations are unattractive ... Second graders will be able to cope with the large print and easy vocabulary". Mexico, Land of Hidden Treasure (1967) Monkey See, Monkey Do (1968) - "A thin story otherwise, not much helped by the rather drab black-and-white drawings". Little Pest Pico (1969) Andy and the Circus (1971)