Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award
Proud 2025-2026 Readers' Choice Award Grant Recipient!
Rebecca Caudill was born on February 2, 1899 in Harlan County, Kentucky.
Her parents, George and Susan Caudill, were both teachers. Ms Caudill graduated from Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia in 1920. She received her masters degree from Vanderbilt University in 1922. Ms Caudill taught English and history from 1920-21 at Sumner County High School, Portland, Tennessee. She also taught English at Collegio Bennett, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for two years. Later she worked as an editor for the Methodist Publishing House in Nashville, TN.
In 1931, Miss Caudill married James Ayars. They had two children, John and Rebecca. (James, Jr. is deceased.)
In 1943, she published her first book for children, Barrie and Daughter, which was a Junior Literary Guild Selection. She published 18 books for children, one book of children's verse, and three other titles that include My Appalachia: A Reminiscence.
Ms Caudill lived with her family in Urbana, Illinois, where she was very active in the community. She was the co-founder of the Champaign-Urbana Peace Council; the originator of a hospitality program for international students at Wesleyan College and served on the board of trustees of the Urbana Free Library, the Pine Mountain Settlement School in Pine Mountain, Kentucky, and Georgia Wesleyan College. She also conducted and taught many writing workshops.
Ms Caudill won many awards and honors for her writing. Her children's books are known for their authentic depictions of settings and characters, and for evoking the lives of pioneers during the eighteenth-and nineteenth-century in America. In, 1950, her book Tree of Freedom, was a runner-up for the Newbery Medal. A Pocket Full of Cricket, illustrated by Evaline Ness was named a Caldecott Medal Honor Book. Her books reflect her Appalachia background, which served as inspiration for her writing.
Bibliography
Many of these works are translated into at least five other languages besides English.
- Barrie and Daughter (1943)
- Happy Little Family (1947)
- Schoolhouse in the Woods (1949)
- Tree Of Freedom (1949)
- Up and Down the River (1951)
- Florence Nightingale (1953)
- Saturday Cousins (1953)
- The House of the Fifers (1954)
- Susan Cornish (1955)
- Schoolroom in the Parlor (1959)
- Time for Lissa (1959)
- Higgins and the Great Big Scare (1960)
- The Best-loved Doll (1962)
- A Pocketful of Cricket (1964)
- The Far-off Land (1964)
- A Certain Small Shepherd (1965)
- The High Cost of Writing (1965)
- Did You Carry the Flag Today, Charley? (1966)
- My Appalachia: a reminiscence (1966)
- Come Along (1969)
- Contrary Jenkins (1969)
- Rebecca Caudill (1969)
- The World of Rebecca Caudill (1970)
- Somebody Go and Bang a Drum (1974)
- Wind, Sand and Sky (1976)
- From Hardshell Baptist to Quaker (1979)
- The Joyous Land: a play for childhood and youth week (n.d.)
See the Scholastics.com website for a list of Caudill's books by interest level, genre/theme and grade level equivalency.
Awards and Honors
In the fall of 1963, the University of Kentucky, Southeast Center honored her with Rebecca Caudill Day. Harlan County's first community library was located in Cumberland, Kentucky, and in 1965 it was named the Rebecca Caudill Public Library in her honor.
Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame
Rebecca Caudill was inducted into The Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame at an induction ceremony on Thursday, January 23, 2014, at the Carnegie Center in Lexington, Kentucky. Caudill was the Kentucky Hall of Fame's first children's author.
Rebecca Caudill Young Reader's Book Award
The Rebecca Caudill Young Reader's Book Award (RCYRBA) is named in honor of Caudill and her contributions to children's literature. The schoolchildren in her adopted state of Illinois, Grade 4 to Grade 8, vote each year for their favorite of twenty nominees.
Resources:
Collier, Laurie and Joyce Nakamura. Major Author and Illustrators for Children and Young Adults. 6 vols. Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1993.
Commire, Anne. Something About the Author. 115 vols. Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1971.
Approved with corrections by Becky Baker, daughter of Rebecca Caudill. July 2008.
Please also check out the site by the ELKF: