![]() She is the childhood incarnation of Elizabeth Orton Jones, who discovered that the power of story is unlimited in those willing to nurture it, to believe anything is possible if you can conceive of and imagine it through to the end. Twig, a young girl without siblings or nearby friends, has her creativity and a wish from the heart for a story to inhabit, a story to look back on fondly when she's grown. Twig doesn't have rolling meadows to run around in, or carefully maintained suburban streets or vast mountain ranges or the clever, clean symmetry of an affluent cityscape. This is a novel as multifaceted and insightful as some of the best in children's literature, the brainchild of a writer capable of transforming an anecdote about an imaginative girl in her urban backyard into a feast for the senses that helps unlock our own wealth of imagination if we've misplaced the key. Elizabeth Orton Jones is an exceptional artist, but Twig demonstrates that her talents don't end there. Had you heard of Elizabeth Orton Jones before seeing this book? If so, your familiarity was probably with her lovely illustrations in Prayer for a Child by Rachel Field, which won the 1945 Caldecott Medal as the year's most distinguished picture book. She also created murals for the Crotched Mountain Rehabilitation Center in Greenfield, New Hampshire and a panel in the children's room of the University of New Hampshire library. During her career, she wrote and illustrated some twenty books for children. Her edition of Little Red Riding Hood, published by Little Golden Books in 1948, became a classic. In 1945, Jones won the Caldecott Medal for her illustrations in Prayer for a Child (1944), written by Rachel Field. In 1937, she wrote and illustrated her first book, Ragman of Paris and His Ragamuffins, using her experiences in France as material. Back in the USA, she studied briefly at the Art Institute of Chicago School. She received a degree from the University of Chicago, and went to France to study painting at the École des Beaux Arts in Fontainebleau and the Académie Colarossi in Paris. She attended House in the Pines, a private high school for girls, where she won a prize for English composition. ![]() She grew up with two siblings in a home filled with music, reading aloud, and encouragement to draw, think, and imagine. Her grandmother was a professional pianist and her grandfather owned a bookstore. Her great-grandfather, Joseph Russell Jones, a friend of Abraham Lincoln, was minister to Belgium under President Ulysses S. Her father was violinist George Roberts Jones and her mother pianist and writer Jessie Orton Jones. Elizabeth Orton Jones was an American children's author and illustrator, born to an artistic and literary family. ![]()
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