News for UCLA's Graduate School of Education & Information Studies
Summer 1997, Vol. 1, No. 3
Lecture by Children's Author Lois Lowry Keeps Frances Clarke Sayers Memory Alive
Noted children's author Lois Lowry, speaking at the Anderson
School's Korn Convocation Hall this May, offered a very personal
and sometimes emotional look at what reading and writing quality
children's literature have meant to her life.
In a speech peppered with readings from her beloved books, Lowry
illustrated how books she read as a child have helped her down
life's rough roads. And how books she now writes for young adolescents
hopefully serve the same purpose.
During a particularly frightening time in 1950, living in Japan
and listening to her parents discussing the war that had just
begun there, Lowry remembered that "when I thought about
my own fear, I thought also about characters who had been companions
to me throughout my childhood."
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Childrens author Lois Lowry, this year's Frances Clarke Sayers
Lecturer, signs books for audience members after her talk.
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One character -- a girl named Mary Jemison in "Indian Captive"
by Lois Lenski -- felt especially real for the young Lowry. "I
knew that her story was a true one, and that she had been brave
when she was in danger; and I knew that I could be, too."
Now, she continued, "I think often of the children who read
my books. I wonder what armor they will need, what weaponry for
their lives in these troubled times."
Lowry, a two-time Newbery Medal winner, was this year's Frances
Clarke Sayers Lecturer -- the fourth in an annual series presented
by the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies'
Department of Information Studies.
The lecture series was established to honor Sayers, the late
DIS professor who gained national renown as an advocate for excellence
in children's literature. Sayers began her career in 1918 at
the New York Public Library's Department of Children's Services.
She arrived at UCLA in 1954. Along with being a teacher, she
was a noted editor, speaker, critic and storyteller. She died
in 1989.
The first lecture was presented in 1993 by Margaret McIlderry,
the distinguished children's book editor. She presented a series
of vivid anecdotes about the children's book community in the
post-war years in which Sayers was so prominent. The ebullient
storyteller and illustrator Ashley Bryan presented the second
Frances Clarke Sayers Lecture in 1995. His theme was "The
Tender Bridge: African Folk Tales, Black American Spirituals
and Poetry."
He was followed in 1996 by children's author Katherine Paterson,
who paid a direct tribute to Sayers in her lecture, "Still
Summoned by Books."
"Summoned by Books" (New York: Viking, 1965) is a collection
of Sayers' most important speeches and writings that still is
treasured by specialists in children's literature and children's
library services.
This year, Lowry's lecture was titled "One Small Thread,"
a phrase out of an essay by Sayers that appeared in Publishers
Weekly in 1950. Writing of children's authors, Sayers said:
"...if you succeed in producing one small thread of genuine
feeling, never doubt that some child will recognize it as his
own and take hold of it, like a spider in a web, and by that one
thread swing himself free into the world of real values."
Lowry said she now realizes that as a frightened child in Japan,
"I was swinging myself free with the threads of feeling I
had gathered throughout my childhood from the pages of books."
She said she hopes that's what readers of her books, like "Number
the Stars" and "The Giver" and her popular series
featuring Anastasia Krupnik, do today.
The success of the Sayers Lecture has been due in large part
for the past two years to the work of its advisory committee and
the generous donations of many friends of Sayers, supporters of
GSE&IS and advocates for children's literature. To ensure
this worthy program continues, the Sayers Fund is accepting contributions.
Checks payable to the UCLA Foundation-Sayers Fund may be mailed
to the Development Office, UCLA Graduate School of Education &
Information Studies, Box 951521, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1521.
For more information, call the development office at (310) 206-0375,
or DIS Associate Professor Virginia Walter at (310) 206-9363.
Virginia A. Walter, an associate professor in GSE&IS' Department
of Information Studies, contributed to this article.
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