[3] When she was a child she moved with her family to Galveston, Texas, which would later prove to be a great source of inspiration for her numerous children’s books.

In an essay published in the September 15, 1956, edition of Library Journal, she reminisces about a woman telling her the story of the Gingerbread Man.

In Chicago, Sayers helped her husband run his bookstore and worked part-time as an editorial assistant for the American Library Association.

[3] Unfortunately, the Great Depression caused a lack of business for the Sayers’s bookstore and they decided to move back to California.

"[5] In 1941, Sayers moved back to New York to replace Anne Carroll Moore at the NYPL as Superintendent of the Department of Work with Children.

[6] "Summoned by Books" is a speech Sayers gave in November 1962 at the annual meeting of the California Library Association.

She manages to capture her admiration for literature by the way she talks about her experience as an assistant librarian for the New York Public Library, as well as by discussing her need to mark pages that hold some of her favorite passages.

Of this, Sayers says that while unpacking she appreciates looking through her books and as “[o]ne [is] leafing through, and there is the favorite passage, the eye [is] caught and held, the mind following after.”[4] In her speech "Of Memory and Muchness", which she gave in November 1956 at a meeting of the California Library Association, Sayers begins by questioning what is meant in the passage of Alice in Wonderland where the Dormouse talks of Alice learning to draw and in turn, drawing many things including "memory, and muchness."

Sayers also talks of the effect of "muchness" in society and the commercialization of literature, warning her fellow librarians of the likes of Walt Disney, saying, “Walt Disney is another big book promoter, and is quite without conscience as to how he waters down, distorts, and vulgarizes such books of high originality…Muchness acclaims Mr. Disney.”[4][7] Throughout her long career, Frances Clarke Sayers was recognized for her many contributions and achievements in librarianship and children's literature.