According to
Ruth Hill Viguers, Field was "fifteen when she first visited Maine and fell under the spell of its 'island-scattered coast'. Calico Bush [1931] still stands out as a near-perfect re-creation of people and place in a story of courage, understated and beautiful."[3]
Field married Arthur S. Pederson in 1935, with whom she collaborated in 1937 on To See Ourselves. In 1938 one of her plays was adapted for the British film The Londonderry Air.[4] She was also successful as an author of adult fiction, writing the bestsellers Time Out of Mind (1935), All This and Heaven Too (1938), and And Now Tomorrow (1942). Field also wrote the English lyrics for the version of
Franz Schubert's "
Ave Maria" used in the Disney film Fantasia.[5]
She moved to Hollywood, where she lived with her husband and daughter.[6]
Rachel Field died at the
Good Samaritan Hospital on March 15, 1942, of pneumonia following an operation.[7]
Awards
Hitty, Her First Hundred Years received the Newbery Award in 1930, for the year's "most distinguished contribution to American literature for children."[8] As a publicity stunt, Field was informed of her win via radio by a group of librarians and
ALA President
Milton J. Ferguson who were flying in a second plane as Field flew from New Mexico to Los Angeles.[9]
Hitty and Prayer for a Child were both named to the
Lewis Carroll Shelf Award list of books deemed to belong "on the same bookshelf" with
Carroll's Alice. Prayer for a Child was one of the seventeen inaugural selections in 1958, which were originally published 1893 to 1957. Hitty was added in 1961.
^
"Books and Authors", The New York Times, April 12, 1936, page BR12.
^
"Lewis is Scornful of Radio Culture: Nothing Ever Will Replace the Old-Fashioned Book, He Tells Booksellers", The New York Times, May 12, 1936, page 25.