Ruth Sawyer

Ruth Sawyer (August 5, 1880 – June 3, 1970) was an American storyteller and a writer of fiction and non-fiction for children and adults. She is best known as the author of Roller Skates, which won the 1937 Newbery Medal. Upon the death of her father, a New York City importer, the family moved to their summer cottage in Maine. There they lived off the land, an experience that Sawyer later described in her novel, The Year of Jubilo. Eventually the family returned to New York and Sawyer attended the Garland Kindergarten Training School for two years.

In 1900, Sawyer left Garland and traveled to Cuba. There she taught storytelling to teachers who were opening kindergartens for children orphaned during the Spanish–American War. After returning to the United States, her work in Cuba helped her obtain a scholarship to Columbia University where she studied storytelling and folk lore.

After Sawyer's husband retired in 1946, they moved to Maine, where they lived until resettling in Boston in 1956. In 1965 she received the seventh annual Regina Medal from the Catholic Library Association for "continued, distinguished contribution to children's literature without regard to the nature of the contribution."

Sawyer never stopped writing, traveling or telling stories. At age 81 she went to Austria to research the legend of the Dwarf King named Laurin.

Ruth Sawyer, "the great lady of American storytelling", Her papers are held at St. Catherine University in St. Paul.

Writing career

Sawyer's first book was an adult novel, The Primrose Ring. It appeared in 1915 and was made into a silent film in 1917, starring Mae Murray and an uncredited Loretta Young in her film debut as a fairy.

The next year Sawyer published her first book for children, This Way to Christmas. The story is about a young boy—based on her son, David—whose parents go on a trip and leave him in the care of an Irish couple, Joanna and Barney. In each chapter David listens to a new Christmas story or folk tale.

Sawyer published one book every year or two for the next twenty years. Her best known book, Roller Skates, was published by Viking Press in 1936. A fictional autobiography, Roller Skates tells of one year in the life of ten-year-old Lucinda Wyman, who was named for one of Sawyer's grandmothers. Lucinda's parents are traveling to Europe and leave her with the Misses Peters in New York City. Permitted almost unlimited freedom, Lucinda roller skates through the city, meeting people of all ages and nationalities. Roller Skates is considered ahead of its time because of Lucinda's freedom and the difficult issues that she must navigate throughout the book, such as the death of two of her friends. She won the 1937 Newbery Medal from the professional librarians, recognizing it as the previous year's "most distinguished contribution to American children's literature".

The second Sawyer book published in 1944 was The Christmas Anna Angel. Based on the stories she heard from a woman in the West Virginia Federal Reformatory, it tells about a young girl growing up in Hungary during World War II. The deprivation of war means there's very little for the family to celebrate with, but the heroine of the story is convinced an angel will provide a miracle in time for Christmas. Illustrated by Hungarian-born Kate Seredy, the book was a runner-up for the Caldecott Medal.

Storytelling

Sawyer has been called "a story teller with consummate gifts – whose tales both oral and written should be characterized as living folk-art". Children's literature expert May Hill Arbuthnot called her " a fine storyteller with an unerring sense of words, mood, and the music of narration". She went on to say "There is no one else who can relate Irish stories as she does". Librarians Brandi Florence & Erica Jarvis write "She had an ability to take old narratives and infuse them with new life so as to make them accessible to a new generation".