Elizabeth Enright, author and illustrator of children's books and writer of short stories for adults, was awarded the Newbery Medal in 1939 for Thimble Summer, a book about a young girl's summer on her family's Wisconsin farm. Yet Enright is best known to readers for her series about the Melendy family, who have been described as a 1940s version of Louisa May Alcott's Marches, and for her two Gone-Away Lake books, which have a similar range of characters. By her death in 1968, these books had earned her the admiration and affection of such writers and critics of children's literature as Eleanor Cameron, Virginia Haviland, Robert Burch, and Irene Haas, among others. As Haas wrote, Enright's "keen perception of childhood, and her remarkable gifts as a writer place her books among the select few that are timeless and enduring."

Enright was born in 1909 in Oak Park, Illinois, but grew up...