Eleanor Cameron - Life

Life

Eleanor Cameron was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in Canada on March 23, 1912. Her family moved to Ohio when she was 3 years old, but she lived most of her life in California. Her parents moved to Berkeley, California early in her life. She then lived in Los Angeles until she married Ian Cameron. She then moved to Pacific Grove, California, where she lived for most of the rest of her life. Cameron studied at UCLA and the Art Center School of Los Angeles. She joined the Los Angeles Public Library in 1930 and later worked as a research librarian for advertising agencies and other Los Angeles-based companies. Her first book, The Unheard Music, was based on her experience as a librarian and was positively received. Cameron did not turn to writing children's books until her two sons asked for her to write space stories. Her first release, 1954's The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, would be a classic and spawn five sequels.

From October 1972 to October 1973 a controversy spawned by Cameron over Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory embroiled the pages of The Horn Book Magazine. Due to her criticisms of the book, labeled by Cameron as "sadistic" and "phony", and the agreement of fellow children's author Ursula K. LeGuin, Charlie was revised by Dah's publisher Knopf to turn the Oompa-Loompa's from the abused, half-naked, African pygmy slaves into their current incarnation as dwarves of mysterious origin whom Willy Wonka adores. Since 1992, Golden Duck.org has presented the Eleanor Cameron Award for Excellence in Children's Science Fiction to the author of an English Language novel written for middle-grade readers. At the time of her death, her residence was in Pebble Beach, California. She died in a hospice in Monterey, California on October 11, 1996 at the age of 84. Besides winning the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, Cameron's other awards included National Book Award runner-up in 1976 for To the Green Mountains and the Kerlan Award in 1985 for her body of work.