1889-1987 · American author and illustrator of children's books, author of The Door in the Wall
About Marguerite de Angeli
Marguerite Lofft de Angeli (1889-1987) was an American author and illustrator of children's books, born in Lapeer, Michigan, who lived most of her life in and around Philadelphia. She wrote and illustrated some twenty-eight books of her own, many about Pennsylvania communities, among them Yonie Wondernose (Caldecott Honor, 1945) and Bright April (1946), and illustrated dozens more by other writers. The Door in the Wall won the 1950 Newbery Medal; her Book of Nursery and Mother Goose Rhymes received a Caldecott Honor in 1955 and Black Fox of Lorne a Newbery Honor in 1957.
The Door in the Wall is set in England in the fourteenth century, in the reign of Edward III, during the years of the Black Death. Robin, the ten-year-old son of the knight Sir John de Bureford and his wife Lady Maud, has been raised to expect the life of a nobleman's son: he is to go as a page to the household of Sir Peter de Lindsay, learn the arts of chivalry and one day become a knight like his father.