Elaine Lobl Konigsburg (February 10, 1930 – April 19, 2013) was an American writer and illustrator of children's books and young adult fiction.
Basil E. Frankweiler won the 1968 Newbery Medal, and Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth was listed as a runner-up in the same year, making Konigsburg the only author to win the Newbery Medal and have another book listed as runner-up in the same year.
[5] Elaine Lobl was born in New York City on February 10, 1930,[6][7] but grew up in small Pennsylvania towns, the second of three daughters.
[7] To earn money for college, she worked as a bookkeeper at a meat plant, where she met David Konigsburg, the brother of one of the owners.
She started graduate school in chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh (1952 to 1954[7]) but they moved to Jacksonville, Florida, after he attained his doctorate.
Mixed-Up Files was inspired by her children's complaints about a picnic with many amenities of home; she inferred that if they ever ran away "[t]hey would certainly never consider any place less elegant than the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
"[6] Konigsburg learned of those first two books' 1968 Newbery Award and honorable mention during her family's move back from Port Chester to Jacksonville.
[6] As summarized by critic Marah Gubar, "For five decades, Konigsburg challenged readers by tackling subjects often avoided in children’s books, from the undercurrent of hostility that runs through an interracial friendship to the domestic unrest generated by the stirrings of pubescent and parental sexuality... Konigsburg was committed to depicting young people as capable knowers of what goes on in their own minds, homes, and the wider world they inhabit.
[3] Konigsburg died in Falls Church, Virginia, on April 19, 2013, from complications of a stroke that she had suffered a week prior.
[10] Teaching at Bartram, she learned that supposed "spoiled young women who had it all [actually] had all the creature comforts of the world, but ... were just as uncomfortable inside as I was when I was growing up.
That Children's Literature Association award recognizes the best children's book published 20 years earlier that did not win a major award;[26] it is named for the mythical bird phoenix, which is reborn from its ashes, to suggest the winning book's rise from obscurity.