Elizabeth Orton Jones (June 25, 1910 – May 10, 2005) was an American illustrator and writer of children's books.
[1] She won the 1945 Caldecott Medal for U.S. picture book illustration, recognizing Prayer for a Child, after being a runner-up one year earlier.
[2] She was born "half past Christmas" in Highland Park, Illinois, to George Roberts Jones, a violinist, and Jessie May Orton, a pianist and a writer.
Jones won the "Silver Cup for English Composition" at her high school, the House in the Pines.
Upon returning, she presented at the Smithsonian Institution a solo display of color etchings of French children which she called the "Four Seasons".
Other books followed and evidenced her experiences as well: Maninka's Children was influenced by the Bohemian girls she knew growing up.
Her home in Mason, New Hampshire, served as the model for her illustrations of a publishing of Little Red Riding Hood by Little Golden Books from 1948 through 1979.
Her friend Bertha Mahony Miller, an editor of Horn Book, would frequently call from seventeen miles away with ideas for Elizabeth to write about.
[2] A watercolor from 1936 is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art[4] as part of the Index of American Design.