Burning Questions of Bingo Brown (14 page)

This feeling was because of the little parts of the past week, things he normally might not have noticed. Like Miss Brownley smiling when she read his name. Like her saying she was glad he was chosen because—how had she put it—because he was a good communicator. It was Mr. Markham seeming glad to see him. It was making Mr. Markham bite his bottom lip to keep from smiling.

A person who was still swirling around in his own personalized tornado would have missed those little things.

“Misty!” Mrs. Wentworth called outside his window. In the living room his parents laughed at something on television.

But in Bingo’s bedroom there was only a sigh of contentment as Bingo pulled his Superman cape closer around his shoulders and fell asleep.

Betsy Byars (b. 1928) is an award-winning author of more than sixty books for children and young adults, including
The Summer of the Swans
(1970), which earned the prestigious Newbery Medal. Byars also received the National Book Award for
The Night Swimmers
(1980) and an Edgar Award for
Wanted . . . Mud Blossom
(1991), among many other accolades. Her books have been translated into nineteen languages and she has fans all over the world.

Byars was born Betsy Cromer in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her father, George, was a manager at a cotton mill and her mother, Nan, was a homemaker. As a child, Betsy showed no strong interest in writing but had a deep love of animals and sense of adventure. She and her friends ran a backyard zoo that starred “trained cicadas,” box turtles, leeches, and other animals they found in nearby woods. She also claims to have ridden the world’s first skateboard, after neighborhood kids took the wheels off a roller skate and nailed them to a plank of wood.

After high school, Byars began studying mathematics at Furman University, but she soon switched to English and transferred to Queens College in Charlotte, where she began writing. She also met Edward Ford Byars, an engineering graduate student from Clemson University, whom she would marry after she graduated in 1950.

Between 1951 and 1956 Byars had three daughters—Laurie, Betsy, and Nan. While raising her family, Byars began submitting stories to magazines, including the
Saturday Evening Post
and
Look
. Her success in publishing warm, funny stories in national magazines led her to consider writing a book. Her son, Guy, was born in 1959, the same year she finished her first manuscript. After several rejections,
Clementine
(1962), a children’s story about a dragon made out of a sock, was published.

Following
Clementine
, Byars released a string of popular children’s and young adult titles including
The Summer of the Swans
, which earned her the Newbery Medal. She continued to build on her early success through the following decades with award-winning titles such as
The Eighteenth Emergency
(1973),
The Night Swimmers
, the popular Bingo Brown series, and the Blossom Family series. Many of Byars’s stories describe children and young adults with quirky families who are trying to find their own way in the world. Others address problems young people have with school, bullies, romance, or the loss of close family members. Byars has also collaborated with daughters Betsy and Laurie on children’s titles such as
My Dog, My Hero
(2000).

Aside from writing, Byars continues to live adventurously. Her husband, Ed, has been a pilot since his student days, and Byars obtained her own pilot’s license in 1983. The couple lives on an airstrip in Seneca, South Carolina. Their home is built over a hangar and the two pilots can taxi out and take off almost from their front yard.

Byars (bottom left) at age five, with her mother and her older sister, Nancy.

A teenage Byars (left) and her sister, Nancy, on the dock of their father’s boat, which he named
NanaBet
for Betsy and Nancy.

Byars at age twenty, hanging out with friends at Queens College in 1948.

Byars and her new husband, Ed, coming up the aisle on their wedding day in June 1950.

Byars and Ed with their daughters Laurie and Betsy in 1955. The family lived for two years in one of these barracks apartments while Ed got a degree at the University of Illinois and Byars started writing.

Byars with her children Nan and Guy, circa 1958.

Byars with Ed and their four children in Marfa, Texas, in July 1968. The whole family gathered to cheer for Ed, who was flying in a ten-day national contest.

Byars at the Newbery Award dinner in 1971, where she won the Newbery Medal for
The Summer of the Swans
.

Byars with Laurie, Betsy, Nan, Guy, and Ed at her daughter Betsy’s wedding on December 17, 1977.