Professor, Author Sarah Margaret Hodges Dies at 94

By Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 1/1/2006

Award-winning children’s book author and professor emeritus Margaret Hodges died on December 13, 2005 at her home near Pittsburgh. She was 94.

Known as Peggy to her friends, Hodges’s picture book Saint George and the Dragon (Little, Brown), illustrated by the late Trina Schart Hyman, won the Caldecott Medal in 1985. One of Hodges’s most recent works, Merlin and the Making of the King (Holiday House), also illustrated by Hyman, was named by School Library Journal as one of the best books for 2004.

Hodges’s first publication was a short story called Miss Matty’s Library, which was published in an elementary school magazine. It described a small, cozy neighborhood library where children were helped by a friendly librarian. Her career as a writer began with One Little Drum (Follett, 1958), and was followed by novels and children’s books based on the life experiences of her and her sons.

Hodges held the title of professor emeritus from the University of Pittsburgh, having been a member of the faculty of the Department of Library and Information Science from 1964 until her retirement in 1976. After earning her MLS in 1958 from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, she worked as a children’s literature specialist and storyteller at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh until 1964.

Hodges once said of her work, “I don’t see myself as a creator, but rather as a sort of midwife, simply bringing out life that existed in itself before I ever took pen in hand.” At the time of her death, she was working on three more children’s books, with a book on Moses, illustrated by Barry Moser, scheduled for publication in 2006.