Ruth Sawyer

Ruth Sawyer: Leerie

Leerie is a book by Ruth Sawyer, who is best known for her books "The Way of the Storyteller," "Roller Skates," and "The Wee Christmas Cabin of Carn-na-ween." Born in Boston in 1880, Ruth Sawyer was an American writer of children's books.. She studied folklore and storytelling at Columbia University, where she earned a B. S. in 1904. Ruth Sawyer's first published work was The Primrose Ring in 1915, of which a movie was made in 1917 (starring Loretta Young). Her best-known book is Roller Skates, which won her the Newbery Medal in 1937. Like Roller Skates, a number of Sawyer's books are autobiographical accounts of her childhood and reveal an interesting perspective on American life at the end of the 19th century. These include The Year of Jubilo and Daddles, The Story of a Plain Hound-Dog. Sawyer also wrote non-autobiographical novels for children, such as The Enchanted Schoolhouse and The Year of the Christmas Dragon , and a scholarly work, The Way of the Storyteller. She published a number of collections of folktales, such as This Way To Christma s(which featured an illustration by a young Norman Rockwell) and My Spain: A Storyteller's Year of Collecting (1967). In 1965, Ruth Sawyer was awarded the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal for her work.