Rachel Field

She was, of her own admission, a shy and awkward child. She lived in a house along Main Street in Stockbridge, Mass, which Norman Rockwell painted into “Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas.” She said of herself, “I wasn’t one of those children who are remembered by their schoolteachers as being particularly promising.” Rachel Field (1894-1942) didn’t learn to read until she was ten but once she started, she never looked back. She published her first essay, “A Winter’s Walk” when she was 16. She published seven poetry collections during her lifetime, generated several novels, and wrote plays, three of which were turned into featured films. She also wrote children’s novels. She bought an eight-inch wooden doll named Hitty from an antique store and turned it into Hitty, Her First Hundred Years, recollections of a 100-year-old doll telling her life story. Her motivation for writing children’s stories emerged from her concern that writers produced overly simple stories for children and talked down to them. Rachel and her husband, with whom she co-authored several plays, adopted Hannah in 1940. She composed a prayer to share with Hannah at bedtime. It was published posthumously in 1944 as Prayer for a Child. It received the Caldecott Medal for the “most distinguished picture book for children.” Her prayer expressed a simple, childlike faith, giving thanks for familiar and treasured things as well as trusting in God’s protection: