Children’s author Barbara Brooks Wallace ’45 has racked up more than her share of awards and rave reviews in a career spanning five decades. And, at 89, she’s still at it, with the Cinderella-themed Diary of a Little Devil released in December and another book in her Miss Switch series coming in the fall.
But she hasn’t forgotten her shaky start. Wallace, who today lives in a retirement home in McLean, Va., credits her success to an initially-nerve-wracking encounter with her freshman-year English professor at Pomona College.
Wallace had always pleased her high school teachers. But at Pomona she came to realize she was prone to “flossy” overwriting and for the first time in her life, she was making C’s on papers. Then English Professor Charles C. Holmes called her into a meeting.
“He pushed my two essays across his desk and said, ‘There really isn’t much I can say to you.’ My heart nearly stopped because my immediate thought was that my writing was so bad, there was no hope for me,” Wallace says.
His next words stunned her: “If these were done by a professional writer,” Holmes said. “They’d be good enough for The New Yorker.”
Holmes went on to tell Wallace to continue taking English and writing classes—advice she heeded some years later. But first she transferred to UCLA, majored in international relations, got married and had a son. It was her sister Constance Brooks Schindehette ’43 who reminded Wallace of Professor Holmes’ advice.
Wallace enrolled in a creative writing course at Santa Monica City College, and eventually tried using her childhood in China as a setting for a fantasy children’s story—resulting in a book that Wallace says was terrible. “But that story hooked me on writing for children, so that’s what I’ve done ever since.”
Claudia, the tale of an 11-year-old girl overcoming the ups and downs of that age, was Wallace’s first published book.
She has earned acclaim ever since. Praised by the American Library Association, The New York Times and Kirkus Reviews, Wallace has been honored with two Edgar Allen Poe Awards from the Mystery Writers of America for The Twin in the Tavern and Sparrows in the Scullery. She also earned the NLAPW Children’s Book Award and International Youth Library “Best of the Best” for Claudia.
Her many works include Victorian-era mysteries, fantasy novels, a biography of her mother, her autobiography, picture books, teleplays and musicals. The Trouble with Miss Switch and Miss Switch to the Rescue were made into Saturday morning animated specials for ABC, both of which were the highest-rated films in the TV series.
Wallace’s latest book is Diary of a Little Devil, a Cinderella-themed story (“No handsome prince, but a happy ending nonetheless!”) of a young girl, Andy, whose widowed father remarries someone with twin daughters who—once they all return to their home in China—make life miserable for Andy.
Between shooting a YouTube video of her reading a chapter from Diary and preparing for the fall release of Miss Switch and the Vile Villains, this octogenarian is keeping at her keyboard. “What’s next for me is to go on writing one way or another,” she says. —Sneha Abraham