Edward Ormondroyd

Born in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1925, Edward Ormondroyd grew up in Pennsylvania and Michigan before serving for two years on a destroyer escort during World War II. After the war, he studied at the University of California, Berkeley, earning degrees in English and library science.

Ormondroyd went on to write children's books that mixed everyday life with fantasy and curiosity. His best-known book, David and the Phoenix (1957), became a longtime favorite with young readers, and his novel Time at the Top was later adapted for television.

He also worked as a librarian in upstate New York, and that love of books seems to fit the gentle, bookish spirit of his fiction. His stories are remembered for being imaginative, funny, and inviting without ever talking down to young readers.