LeClaire Gowans Alger (1898–1969) was an American writer better known under her pseudonym Sorche Nic Leodhas.
She won a Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1962, and a Newbery Honor for Thistle and Thyme in 1963.
Her 1965 children's picture book, Always Room for One More, illustrated by Nonny Hogrogian, won the 1966 Caldecott Medal.
[2] While working at the library, Alger published her first book, Jan and the Wonderful Mouth Organ, in 1939.
[2] Following her death in 1969, her great-niece completed and published some of her unfinished manuscripts in Twelve Great Black Cats, and Other Eerie Scottish Tales (1971), illustrated by Vera Bock,[1] whom Alger had worked with for two previous books.