E.L. Konigsburg Biography

E.L. Konigsburg wrote and illustrated books for young readers, including the 1997 Newbery Medal winner, The View From Saturday. Raised in small towns in Pennsylvania, she earned a degree in chemistry from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Institute of Technology and married in 1952. She moved to Florida with her husband and taught science at a private school, then started a family and took art lessons. Once her third child was in school, Konigsburg turned to writing and illustrating. She sold her first book in 1967, Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth, and quickly followed up with her second, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler the same year. Both were nominated for the 1968 John Newbery Medal — her second book won, and her first book was the runner-up. She wrote more than 20 books and illustrated several of them, including A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver (1973, about Eleanor of Aquitaine), Father’s Arcane Daughter (1976), Up From Jericho Tel (1986) and Silent to the Bone (2000).