Regina Medal - Recipient for 2007
Regina Medalist 2007: Margaret K. McElderry
Margaret K. McElderry was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, graduated from Mount Holyoke, Class of 1933, and earned a second Bachelor of Arts (in Library Science) from Carnegie Library School. From July 1934 until November 1943, she worked with Anne Carroll Moore in the New York Public Library as a children’s librarian. She left to join the Office of War Information Overseas Branch in London, where she stayed until May 1945, when she was transferred to Brussels with the United States Information Service as Chief of Special Projects. In November 1945, she became Editor of Children’s Books at Harcourt, Brace and Company. She moved on to Atheneum in late 1971, where her own line of books was launched, a first for a children’s book editor.
In 1984, when Atheneum became part of the Macmillan Publishing Company, Ms. McElderry became Vice President and Publisher of Margaret K. McElderry Books. She retained that title when Macmillan Inc. was acquired by Simon & Schuster in 1994. In 1998, she retired as director of her imprint and became Editor-at-Large.
Margaret McElderry has published such distinguished authors and artists as Susan Cooper, Eloise McGraw, Nancy Bond, Helen Oxenbury, Erik Blegvad, Irene Haas, Margaret Mahy, and many others. She was the first editor whose books won both the Newbery and the Caldecott Awards in the same year (1952). In 1975, Ms. McElderry was given the Woman’s National Book Association Award; in 1978, the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Mount Holyoke College; and in 1990, the R.R. Bowker Literary Market Place Corporate Award for Children’s Books. In 1988, she was made a lifetime Honorary Member of the International Board on Books for Young People. In 1991, she was given the Hope S. Dean Memorial Award by the Foundation for Children’s Books. Margaret McElderry delivered the May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture in 1994 at Coronado Public Library in Coronado, California. She was given the Lifetime Achievement Award from The Christophers in 2000. Ms. McElderry is a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania.
Biography courtesy of Margaret K. McElderry Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Division.
