Biography
It was in Houston, Texas, on December 9, 1915, that the family of Loy and Genevive Jarvis welcomed their daughter, Eloise, into the world. Though she grew to be interested in a variety of pursuits, McGraw determined, at the age of eight, when she wrote her first story, that she would be a writer. Still, the path to that goal was not entirely straight. After graduating from Principia College in 1937, she pursued graduate study in painting and sculpture at Oklahoma University in 1938 and Colorado University in 1939. On January 29, 1940, she married William Corbin McGraw, a writer and filbert grower. The couple soon had two children, Anthony and Lauren Lynn.
In 1943 and 1944, McGraw began her career as an instructor in portrait and figure painting at Oklahoma City University. In 1949, she began to write seriously, and after that she produced twenty-two novels, including The Moorchild (1996), Steady Stephanie, a one act play; several adult novels, including Pharaoh, and a variety of articles for literary journals.
In 1961, McGraw volunteered to correct and grade English compositions for a local high school in Oklahoma City. Later, she taught adult education fiction writing classes at Lewis and Clark College. She taught writing classes at the University Haystack summer conference and manuscript clinics and directed juvenile workshops in Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington, and La Jolla, California. As of the early 2000s, McGraw continued to speak about writing at schools and literary gatherings and was featured in writers' "teleconferences" broad- cast on educational channels. She is a member of the Authors Guild, Authors League of America, and Royal Historian of Oz for The International Wizard of Oz Club.
McGraw has won numerous awards for her work in the field of Young Adult Literature, beginning with the New York Herald Tribune Children's Book Festival honor book award for Crown Fire, in 1951. In 1952, Moccasin Trail was named a Newbery Honor Book, and later it received the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award. The Golden Goblet was named a Newbery Honor Book in 1962. Other awards include the William Allen White Nomination, The "Edgar" Award from the Mystery Writers of America for The Money Room (1981), The Mark Twain Award, Sequoah Award, Blue Bonnet Award, and the Western Writers Golden Spur Nomination. The Seventeenth Swap (1986) won the Iowa Children's Choice Award, the Tennessee Volunteer State Book Award, and the West Virginia Children's Book Award, all in 1990 and 1991. The Moorchild was named a Newbery Honor Book in 1997.
Writing, for McGraw, is a highly personal experience. Here she unconsciously explores her own emotions, clarifies her attitudes, sometimes resolves an inner conflict, and comes to terms with a problem in her own life. These elements of her life come to light for her, she says, after the story is complete and she revisits it later. McGraw describes her writing as a process which involves listening. She turns her inner ear to what her characters are saying and how they say it and writes down what she has heard as nearly as she can catch it. Starting with a character, she begins to shape the plot and mood of the story which grows and changes as the writing progresses. Once a believer in meticulous outlines, McGraw has developed a freer, more fluent approach. Using index cards, she first writes notes, ideas, bits of scene or dialogue, plans for setting and character development as well as other facts she needs to know. Slowly, the story takes shape in her subconscious and pours itself out on paper.
McGraw is, by her own...
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admission, an avid researcher. She enjoys research, she says, the discovery of a place, time, and the people who live there and then recreating it in stories. This search for accuracy not only expands a writer's education, she says, but keeps her from making a fool of herself. To this end, McGraw uses three infallible approaches to her research: library shelves, museum collections, and her own powers of visualization.
Where once she juggled a 9-to-5 workday with all its necessary interruptions, she has recently adopted a long, half-day schedule. She rises at six and, with coffee in hand, begins work at her desk. Around 8:00, McGraw takes time out for dressing and breakfast. At nine, she is back to work until 12:00 or 1:00. By then she's tapped of her writing and focuses on other things.
In a March 1995 article for The Writer, McGraw set out to answer the question so commonly asked of her: "Why do you choose to write for children?" She thinks a better question would be: "How do I—does anybody—write for the children of today, who are growing up in a world of grim realities that they must take as a given and learn to cope with?" Since several of McGraw's works involve worlds far different in space and time from the realistic problem fiction produced by many writers, she has thoroughly considered both the why and how. She writes for children because they are more interesting, she says, still in a state of flux, changing and changeable, not yet in the "jelled" condition of adults. Also, she likes telling stories the way the characters come into her head and those characters often fall between the ages of ten and twelve. This approach, she says, gives her freedom to write the way she wants to.
Having said that, McGraw believes that no matter what the child's status or place in the world is, that child can relate to stories of imagination, stories that create a special place, characters different from themselves, remote planets, historical distance and time, and a "magic far beyond a mere change of scene." These stories provide an "escape from narrow vision."
