Lucy Johnston Sypher

Lucy Johnston Sypher, (August 6, 1907) - (December 1990), was the author of four children's books loosely based on her childhood in the small prairie town of Wales, North Dakota. The books in the series include: "The Edge of Nowhere (1972)," "Cousins and Circuses (1974)," "The Spell of the Northern Lights (1975)," and "The Turnabout Year (1976)."cite web | author=Chester Fritz Library | year= 2003| title = "Lucy Johnston Sypher Papers" | Work= "Elwyn B. Robinson Department of Special Collections, Chester Fritz Library, University of North Dakota (Grand Forks, North Dakota, USA)" | url=http://www.und.edu/dept/library/Collections/og1473.html| accessdate= February 15| accessyear=2007]

Her life as depicted in her books

In the books, she describes life in Wales as the daughter of George, the town banker, and Caroline, a church organist and music teacher from a cultured, well-educated big city family. In the books, eleven-year-old Lucy attends a small country school and befriends the three daughters of an English emigree family and their spoiled brother, who is nicknamed "The Prince of Wales," (which is a pun on his tendency to cry easily as well as the name of the town.) She visits her big city cousins and is irritated by her mischievous older brother, Amory. The final book, "The Turnabout Year," describes her mother's difficult recovery after the birth of her younger brother, George, and Lucy's decision to attend high school in Minneapolis. Sypher said when the books were published that the events described in the books were highly fictionalized.

Background

Sypher was raised in Wales, the daughter of George Johnston and Caroline Gale Johnston. She graduated from the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, North Dakota in 1927 and received her master of arts degree from Tufts University in 1929. She married Wylie Sypher in 1929. She was an instructor of English and history at Lasell Junior College in Auburndale, Massachusetts for a number of years before she published her first book. She and her husband raised their family in Massachusetts.

Notes

References

*Johnston, Lucy Sypher, "The Edge of Nowhere," Atheneum, 1972, ISBN 0689300697
*Johnston, Lucy Sypher, "Cousins and Circuses," Atheneum, 1974
*Johnston, Lucy Sypher, "The Spell of the Northern Lights," Atheneum, 1975
*Johnston, Lucy Sypher, "The Turnabout Year," Atheneum, 1976

External links

* [http://www.fiveowls.com/sky.htm M. Sarah Smedman, "Where the Sky Meets the Sand": Dreams and Reality in Prairie Fiction for Young Readers]