While I have most certainly always found Rachel Field's 1929 Hitty, Her First Hundred Years generally descriptive and engaging enough to both appreciate and more than simply mildly enjoy (especially with regard to historicity and how the novel basically in many ways is such a mirror-image perfect portrait of the 19th and early 2oth century, as narrated by, as seen and viewed by a doll, by Hitty herself), I have also and nevertheless generally always felt more than a bit personally uncomfortable with regard to certain parts of Hitty, Her First Hundred Years, in particular concerning gender stratification and how both visible and even not so visible minorities are generally approached and depicted by Hitty and by extension by author Rachel Field. She died at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, California on Maof pneumonia following an operation.

Pederson in 1935, with whom she collaborated in 1937 on To See Ourselves.įield was a descendant of David Dudley Field. Field also wrote the English lyrics for the version of Franz Schubert's Ave Maria used in the Disney film Fantasia. She is also famous for her poem-turned-song 'Something Told the Wild Geese'. Calico Bush still stands out as a near-perfect re-creation of people and place in a story of courage, understated and beautiful.' Field was also a successful author of adult fiction, writing the bestsellers Time Out of Mind (1935), All This and Heaven Too (1938), and And Now Tomorrow (1942). According to Ruth Hill Vigeurs in her introduction to Calico Bush, book of Rachel Field for children, published in 1931, Rachel Field was 'fifteen when she first visited Maine and fell under the spell of its 'island-scattered coast'. Her book, Prayer for a Child, was a recipient of the Caldecott Medal for its illustrations by Elizabeth Orton Jones.

Nicholas Magazine and was educated at Radcliffe College. She is best known for her Newbery Medal–winning novel for young adults, Hitty, Her First Hundred Years, published in 1929.Īs a child Field contributed to the St. Rachel Lyman Field was an American novelist, poet, and author of children's fiction.

Hitty her first 100 years