My Spain; A Storyteller's Year of Collecting

New York, New York: The Viking Press, 1967. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Good. 160 pages. Inscribed by the author on the title page. Inscription reads To Alice & Henry (who dont have to read it) with love from Albert & Ruth. Chapters include A Doorway into Spain; The Pilgrim Way of Santiago; The Streets of Madrid; Enchantment in Granada; The Good Night in Spanish Morocco; Winter Pageantry; Voyaging after Columbus; The Magic Island of the Hesperides; and The Long, Long Night. Map follows page 24. Ruth Sawyer was the professional name of Ruth Sawyer Durand (August 5, 1880-June 3, 1970), an American writer of children's books. She was born in Boston and raised in New York City. She studied folklore and storytelling at Columbia University. 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. Sawyer also wrote non-autobiographical novels for children, such as The Enchanted Schoolhouse and The Year of the Christmas Dragon, as well as a scholarly work, The way of the Storyteller (1942). She published a number of collections of folktales, such as This Way to Christmas (which featured an illustration by a young Norman Rockwell) and My Spain: A Storyteller's Year of Collecting (1967). She may be best known as the author of Roller Skates, which won the 1937 Newbery Medal. In 1965, she was awarded the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal. Sawyer first saw Spain through Washington Irving's eyes. Later she went in search of her own Spain. And fell in love- with the country and with its people. She gathered stories of Spain for American children to enjoy. In 1900, Sawyer left Garland and traveled to Cuba. There she taught storytelling to teachers who were opening kindergartens for children orphaned during the Spanish-American War. After returning to the United States, her work in Cuba helped her obtain a scholarship to Columbia University where she studied storytelling and folk lore. She received her BS in education from Columbia in 1904. She then went to work for the New York school system, telling stories to people born overseas. In 1910 she started the first storytelling program for children for the New York Public Library. Sawyer also wrote articles for The New York Sun, which twice sent her to Ireland to study. While overseas on those and other trips she collected folk tales and continued learning the art of storytelling, eventually becoming well known for her folk tale collections and storytelling prowess. Her life experiences frequently gave Sawyer ideas for her books, and she spent her life collecting and telling folk tales and stories. At least one biographer pointed out the parallel between Sawyer and the Brothers Grimm.
Sawyer worked for the Cornell University Extension Services from 1923 to 1933, traveling through rural New York telling stories and lecturing about books. In 1931, though Spain was already torn by factions of the upcoming Civil War, Sawyer spent the year traveling around the country collecting folk tales. While there she met a young boy who would become the model for her book Tono Antonio. From 1935 to 1945 Sawyer visited the West Virginia Federal Reformatory for Women every month, telling stories. There she met a Hungarian woman who told her about Christmas in her country. This became the basis for Sawyer's The Christmas Anna Angel. In 1965 she received the seventh annual Regina Medal from the Catholic Library Association for "continued, distinguished contribution to children's literature without regard to the nature of the contribution." Sawyer never stopped writing, traveling or telling stories. At age 81 she went to Austria to research the legend of the Dwarf King named Laurin.