Children’s book author Cynthia DeFelice, oft-lauded for her deft storytelling and absorbing themes, died on May 24, in Geneva, N.Y. She was 72.
Cynthia “Dee” Carter DeFelice was born December 28, 1951, to William, a psychiatrist, and Ann Carter, an English teacher, in Philadelphia. She grew up in nearby Abington, Pa., enjoying a childhood she called “pretty idyllic,” in a profile for Something About the Author. She credited her mother with sharing a rich storytelling tradition and encouraging a deep appreciation for reading with DeFelice and her siblings. “My two brothers, my sister, and I would snuggle in Mom’s lap while she read to us,” she recalled in SATA. “She was a great storyteller and had this terrific sense of rhythm and timing. It was in that big, tan chair where we all used to curl up together that I learned to love stories and to feel their magic.”
During her high school years DeFelice worked in a bookstore a few days a week, providing her proximity to plenty of books, but recalled, “I never even thought of being a writer then.” After graduating with honors, DeFelice chose to attend William Smith College in Geneva, N.Y., a town she loved so much that she made it her longtime home. DeFelice earned her B.A. in 1973, and upon graduation briefly took on work doing barn painting and other “real world” jobs.
In 1974, she married Ralph DeFelice, a dentist, and became a full-time stepmother to two young children. Once her children were in school, DeFelice went back to school herself, earning her master’s in library science from Syracuse University in 1980. Her subsequent position as an elementary school librarian in Newark, N.Y., was the true launch of her journey to becoming a writer for children. “I used to read to my students and tell them stories,” she recalled. “I’d be reading a book and I’d watch their faces. When the book was really good, their eyes were wide, their mouths were hanging open with excitement! I decided I just had to write a book that would make kids’ faces look like that.”
One of her first steps toward that goal was to form a storytelling partnership with music teacher Mary DeMarsh. The pair called themselves the Wild Washerwomen and did storytelling performances in schools throughout upstate New York. When she kept getting requests from kids about where they could find her stories in book form, DeFelice knew she was on to something. In 1987, at the age of 36, she gave it a try. Her first published book, the novella The Strange Night Writing of Jassamine Colter (Macmillan, 1988), acquired by editor Beverly Reingold, was inspired by a nightmare DeFelice had about her own disembodied hand, writing messages in perfect calligraphy. Positive reviews for the book proliferated, and DeFelice felt buoyed enough to leave her school library career and write full-time.
She quickly followed up her publishing debut with a picture-book retelling of a spooky folktale, The Dancing Skeleton (Macmillan, 1989). The following year, her second novel, Weasel (Macmillan, 1990), set in 1830s Ohio where young Nathan confronts the deranged man who had originally been hired by the U.S. government to drive the Shawnee people off the land, and now kills indiscriminately, and has seriously wounded Nate’s father, earned critical praise and several awards.
DeFelice continued her prolific output, toggling between picture books and longer fiction, historical adventures, thrillers, and humorous tales, throughout the 1990s and 2000s, crafting more than 40 books in all. She especially enjoyed visiting school children around the country to talk about her books and writing. “I want my readers to come away from my books with a memory worth having, something that will enrich their lives and something that they might not otherwise have the chance to experience,” she told SATA.
Author Bruce Coville, a longtime friend, shared this remembrance. “Cynthia was one of my favorite people in the world. For over 25 years she was the primary host for our writers group, so that once a month we had the privilege of spending the day in her company at the beautiful lakeside home she cherished so much. She was unfailingly gracious, and wonderfully insightful when critiquing, asking the right questions at both the micro and macro level to help lift up a manuscript. She also had a marvelous sense of humor. Our writers group read aloud to each other, and Cynthia’s readings of sections from her last novel, Fort, had us howling with laughter. A fabulous cook, a gifted storyteller, a wonderful quilter, and a dedicated outdoorswoman, she lived a great and very full life and she will be missed desperately by a wide and loving circle of friends.”
Wesley Adams, executive editor at FSG Books for Young Readers, paid tribute. “FSG has been proud to be Cynthia’s publishing home for decades. Over the years, she worked primarily with longtime editor Beverly Reingold and Margaret Ferguson. I had the honor of editing her last book, Fort, and still recall laughing out loud as I line edited, and then chortling all over again in reviewing the manuscript on the phone with Cynthia. It’s been nine years since Fort was published and the fact that it and over a dozen of her other books are still very much in print on our backlist speaks to her particular talent in writing pacy, funny, absorbing, and utterly kid-friendly middle-grade adventures and picture books. To say that we will miss her and her kind-hearted, humor-filled storytelling is an understatement.”
