YA Author Jeannette Eyerly Dies at 100

By Rocco Staino -- School Library Journal, 9/3/2008 9:00:00 AM

Jeannette Eyerly, who brought the subjects of abortion, marijuana, and body image into the mainstream of teen literature in the 60s and 70s, died on August 18 at the age of 100.

Her book, Escape from Nowhere (Lippincott, 1969), about a pot-smoking girl trying to fit in with her peers, was named an outstanding book in 1969 by the New York Times, and Voice of Youth Advocate co-editor Dorothy Broderick wrote that it was the best of all “the recent books about drugs, primarily because it is first of all, about human beings and only secondarily about a social problem.”

Bonnie Jo, Go Home (Bantam, 1973), which deals with a pregnant girl who travels to New York City from the Midwest to seek a legal abortion, paints  a tawdry picture of doctors, bureaucratic systems and the Westside of Manhattan. 

Adoption was often a theme in Eyerly’s books. Robin the main character in A Girl Like Me (1966) learns that her best friend is putting her illegitimate child up for adoption while also learning that she too was illegitimate. 

Ten years later, the author broke with her usual female protagonist and wrote He’s My Baby Now (1977, both Lippincott), which features Charles, a teen father, who is unwilling to give his baby up for adoption. School Library Journal said at that time that the book was “sure to twang a responsive cord in (Charles’) contemporaries.” The book was made into an ABC afterschool special entitled, School Boy Father, starring Rob Lowe.

Born Jeannette Hyde in Topeka, KS, she married Frank Eyerly in 1932. Eyerly earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Iowa in 1930. She wrote 17 books for young adults over a 25-year period, using her novels to provide guidance to teenage girls. In 2006 she was inducted into the Iowa Women’s Hall of Fame.