It’s the birthday of Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth (1893-1986, #nicelonglife), who published over 90 books for children and adults, won the Newbery Medal in 1930 for The Cat Who Went to Heaven, and was a runner up for the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1968.

Coatsworth was born in Buffalo, New York. The family was well off; Coatsworth went to a private girls’ school, and the family traveled to places like the Alps and Egypt when Coatsworth was still very young. When her father died in 1912, Coatsworth, her mother, and her sister traveled extensively in the Far East—basically they were fearless, spending one night alone at a Chinese emperor’s tomb because their guides, afraid of bandits, deserted them. (Wusses.) After studying at Vassar and getting an MA from Columbia, Coatsworth traveled throughout Indonesia, the Philippines, and China. Her travels would later influence her writing.

Coatsworth began publishing poetry in magazines, and her collection for adults, Fox Footprints, came out in 1923; her first book of children’s poems, The Cat and the Captain, appeared in 1927. In the meantime, she had met and fallen in love with writer Henry Beston; she later called it “a regular New England ten-year courtship.” They settled first in Hingham, Massachusetts, but soon moved to Chimney Farm, a farmhouse in Maine, to raise their two daughters, one of whom, Catherine Barnes, went on to become the first Poet Laureate of Maine. Coatsworth continued living at Chimney Farm after Beston died in 1968 and herself died at home at the age of 93.

Coatsworth’s final book, Personal Geography: Almost an Autobiography, came out in 1976.

Have a fresh, green, verdant Friday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.