The E.L. Konigsburg children's book From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler was released fifty years ago. It won the Newberry Medal in 1968, and has been a staple of childhood reading ever since. It has inspired thousands of children to visit and enjoy the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. If you remember the book, or read it to your children, you'll want to know about the author and what inspired her.
Elaine Lobl (E.L.) was born in Manhattan in 1930, but grew up in small-town Pennsylvania. She earned a degree in chemistry from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, and married industrial psychologist David Konigsburg in 1952. But a career in science wasn’t to be. She had trouble with the lab work; her son Paul says more than once, she blew the sink up—and lost her eyebrows—mixing the wrong elements.. So Elaine became a stay-at-home mother of three, and while living in Port Chester, New York, decided to start writing.
“When we were in grade school, Mom would write in the morning. When the three of us kids would come home for lunch, she would read what she wrote,” says Paul Konigsburg, 62. “If we laughed she kept it in. If not, she rewrote it.”
The Met has paid tribute to Konigsburg and her work many times, and will host a couple of special events for the book's anniversary this summer. Read about Konigsburg and her best seller at Smithsonian.