May Hill Arbuthnot - The Arbuthnot Prize, The Arbuthnot Honor Lecture

Educator, born in Mason City, Iowa, USA. While she was principal of the Cleveland, OH Kindergarten-Primary Training School (1922–7), the school was made a department of elementary education at Western Reserve University and she became associate professor. She established the first nursery schools in Ohio, and founded the Western Reserve Nursery School, which became a nationally known centre for the study of early education. In 1939, with William Gray of the University of Chicago, she produced the Basic Readers: Curriculum Foundation Series (1940, 1946) - the ‘Dick and Jane’ books used by more than half the children in the USA. Her college textbook, Children and Books (1947), became the most widely used textbook on children's literature, largely because of her insistence on high standards of evaluation and the importance of literary quality. Her Arbuthnot Anthology of Children's Literature (1953) went into several later editions.

Mary L Hill Arbuthnot (born Mary L Hill 27 August 1884, died 2 October 1969) was a US educator, a distinguished writer, an editor, a children's literature scholar, a lecturer and an associate professor of education at Western Reserve University. She was the author of the well-known text about children's literature Children and books and of Time for Poetry, Arbuthnot Anthology, Time for fairy tales, Time for true tales, Children's Books too good to miss, Time for Stories Past and Present, Time for old magic and Time for new magic.

The Arbuthnot Prize

May Hill Arbuthnot established the Arbuthnot Prize, an annual award for the best in children's literature.

The Arbuthnot Honor Lecture

The Arbuthnot Honor Lecture is given each year by an author, artist, critic, librarian, historian or teacher of children's literature.