Just The Way I Remember It!

Okay, so a couple of nights ago I was reading some more of Minders of Make-Believe by Leonard Marcus, which is really wonderful even though I have been reading it for months. And what do I come upon but a few pages about Francelia Butler, a leader in children's literature academics who used to teach at the University of Connecticut.

A lot of what Marcus had to say about her I'd heard before because back in my own personal Dark Ages, I worked at UConn for an institute that appears to no longer exist. (Good. Maybe now I'll stop having that recurring dream about having worked there my entire life.) Professor Butler was there at the same time. In fact, I was working at UConn the year she brought Margaret Hamilton to campus. (Which Marcus mentions.) Though I wasn't a kidlit person then, I certainly knew who she was because she and her children's literature course were famous. People wanted to take that class. The story was that it was always full. Just as Marcus says in his book.

And everything Marcus says about Butler giving her personal library to another college in a "pointed rebuke"--that's the story I heard at the time, too.

Reading all this made me feel as if I were back there listening to campus gossip again. Only now it's history.