Happy 100th, Jeannette Eyerly! (YA "problem novelist," "Someone to Love Me" -1987)
leno...@yahoo.com
she still lives.
There are quite a few recent, positive Amazon reviews of her old books
– most of which seem to be by readers still in their teens!
http://www.state.ia.us/government/dhr/sw/hall_fame/iafame/iafame-eyerly.html
(photo & brief bio. "She was inducted into the Iowa Women's Hall of
Fame in 2006.")
http://www.nfb.org/images/nfb/Publications/fr/fr19/Issue2/f190210.htm
(review of “The Seeing Summer” – you have to scroll to the bottom)
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=jeannette+eyerly&pics=on&x=0&y=0
(a few covers)
“He's My Baby, Now was adapted as an ABC Afterschool Special titled
Schoolboy Father (starring the very young Rob Lowe and Dana Plato)……
The Seeing Summer was adapted as a short classroom play.”
AWARDS
"Susan Glaspell Award, 1965, for Gretchen's Hill; Christopher Award,
1969, for Escape from Nowhere; Radigan Cares was selected as one of
the Child Study Association's Books of the Year, 1970; Someone to Love
Me selected 'Book for Reluctant Reader,' American Library Association,
1987; Polk County (Iowa) Mental Health Center was renamed 'The Eyerly/
Ball Community Health Services Building,' 1995, in her honor."
Contemporary Authors:
Jeannette Eyerly told Something About the Author Autobiography Series
(SAAS) that her "lifelong preoccupation with the written word began
when I was eight years old and saw my byline on a poem in the
'Children's Corner' page of the Des Moines Capital (Iowa). It had been
submitted by my third grade teacher without my knowledge. I was
ecstatic to see my name. . . . The die was cast. I decided I wanted to
be an author and that is what I became."…..
In her novels for young adults, Eyerly writes of the many possible
troubles teenagers face, including pregnancy, abortion, suicide,
mental illness, crime, alcoholism, and divorce (and death, drugs, and
shoplifting). By dealing with these subjects openly Eyerly hopes to
give young people guidance……..
…….Eyerly points out in SAAS that Drop- Out "is often cited as the
turning point between the `gumdrop' [novels in which the teen heroine
always gets the boy of her dreams in the end] and the `anything goes'
novels of the eighties."
In 1966 Eyerly dealt with illegitimacy and adoption in A Girl Like Me,
the story of Robin, who discovers that her friend, Cass, is about to
give birth to an illegitimate baby. Robin, who has been tempted to
have sex with her own boyfriend, also learns that she was the child of
an unwed mother before her parents adopted her. A Girl Like Me is
described by a contributor in Kirkus Reviews as "somewhat more than a
do-good soap opera from one of the better writers for teenage girls,"
and "a quite realistic and candid story" by a reviewer in Bulletin of
the Center for Children's Books………
Teen pregnancy and the plight of the unwed father were themes of two
of Eyerly's novels. The fatherless teenage boy Charles, who
impregnates his girlfriend in He's My Baby, Now, decides that he does
not want to sign the papers to put the infant up for adoption. A
reviewer in the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books observes
that although the story is not entirely convincing, "it may appeal to
readers since most books about premarital pregnancy focus almost
exclusively on the mother." Joan Scherer Brewer declares in School
Library Journal that Charles' tale "is sure to twang a responsive
chord in his contemporaries." A pregnant teenager's plight is detailed
again in Someone to Love Me, in which fifteen-year-old Patrice chooses
to keep her baby. Cynthia J. Leibold, writing in School Library
Journal, praises the "well constructed narrative" and "realistic
actions and characteristics personified in Patrice." According to a
reviewer in Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, however,
Someone to Love Me is "a `problem novel' with a fairy-tale ending,
which is presented as happy, but is in fact very sad."………
……..Reflecting on her career, Eyerly writes in SAAS, "I have sometimes
wondered what it would be like to have writing as one's only
occupation." She continues, "Though I've occasionally been wistful,
I've never been envious. I think of myself as a wife, a mother, a
grandmother, and a sister. . . . Add to that the roles of friend,
breadmaker, volunteer worker for this or that good cause, teacher, lay
psychiatrist . . . the list goes on and on--and, of course, includes
author, which I wanted to be all along.
"The curious thing is that had I not been all of the above, I could
never have been an author at all, for in one guise or another they
have been the source of what I write about."
WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR:
NOVELS (FOR YOUNG ADULTS EXCEPT AS NOTED)
* (With Valeria Winkler Griffith under joint pseudonym Jeannette
Griffith) Dearest Kate: A Catholic Girl Meets the Problems of Manners
and Morals, Lippincott (Philadelphia), 1961.
* More Than a Summer Love, Lippincott, 1962.
* Drop-Out, Lippincott, 1963.
* The World of Ellen March, Lippincott, 1964.
* Gretchen's Hill (for children, illustrated by Burmah Burris),
Lippincott, 1965.
* A Girl Like Me, Lippincott, 1966.
* The Girl Inside, Lippincott, 1968.
"Recounts a teenage girl's painful trek to emotional stability and
maturity after her parents' deaths and her attempted suicide.
Christina was remembering, arranging and rearranging the pieces of her
shattered life every night since her father’s death so soon after that
of her mother. She remembered one such night that had ended in an
attempt to take her own life - the night that had brought her to the
hospital and would take her to the Juvenile Correction home. But Dave
and Natalie Keller take her into their home where being with a family
again begins to remove the horrible memories of her parents’ deaths.
Then tragedy strikes again and Christina must learn to cope with life
and find within herself the means for living."
* Escape from Nowhere, Lippincott, 1969.
* Radigan Cares, Lippincott, 1970.
" There wasn't anything that really turned Doug Radigan on except his
car, the Blue Bomb. School was a drag, and he just wanted to pass
enough courses to graduate."
* The Phaedra Complex, Lippincott, 1971.
* Bonnie Jo, Go Home, Lippincott, 1972.
* Goodby to Budapest: A Novel of Suspense, Lippincott, 1974.
“Megan becomes involved in international intrigue when she is lured
to Budapest where spies are trying to obtain secret information from
her father.”
* The Leonardo Touch: A Novel of Suspense, Lippincott, 1976.
* He's My Baby, Now, Lippincott, 1977.
* See Dave Run, Lippincott, 1978.
“Running away from an intolerable home situation, a 15-year-old boy
finds that he has nowhere to go and no one to turn to.”
* If I Loved You Wednesday, Lippincott, 1980.
(about a boy's crush on an older woman whose first name he doesn't
even know)
* The Seeing Summer (for children, illustrated by Emily McCully),
Lippincott, 1981.
“Carey is disappointed when the new girl next door turns out to be
blind, but she soon discovers that having no sight doesn't stop Jenny
from doing almost everything any other girl can -- and more. And when
the two of them are kidnapped it will take their combined skills and
energies to get away.”
* Seth and Me and Rebel Makes Three, Lippincott, 1983.
“Ryan, seventeen, leaves home to move in with his best friend, Seth,
and together they cope with independence and a girl named Rebel who
needs their help.”
* Angel Baker, Thief, Lippincott, 1984.
* Someone to Love Me, Lippincott, 1987.
* Food for Thought by Jeannette Eyerly & Fritz Scholder, 2003
“Ms. Eyerly provided 26 short poems on vegetables & fruit but Mr.
Scholder provided on 25 line drawings.”
OTHER
* (With Lee Hadley and Annabelle Irwin) Writing Young Adult
Novels, Writer's Digest (Cincinnati), 1988.
* An Alphabet Book for Adults, Nazraeli Press, 2000.
"Wrote syndicated weekly newspaper column, 'Family Diary,' with
Valeria Winkler Griffith, under joint pseudonym Jeannette Griffith.
Contributor to Ladies' Home Journal, McCall's, and other periodicals."
Lenona.