This premium quality large print edition includes the complete, unabridged text of Cornelia Meigs' classic tale in a freshly edited and newly typeset edition. With a large 6" x 9" page size, this edition is printed on heavyweight 55# bright white paper with a fully laminated cover featuring an original full color design.

The first of three Newbery Honor Books by Cornelia Meigs, The Windy Hill, published in 1921, represents an early example of a fully developed and well-written mystery adventure story intended for younger readers.

Cornelia Meigs

Cornelia Meigs (1884-1973) was an American writer, teacher, historian and critic of children's literature. The fifth of six daughters, the family moved from Rock Island, Illinois to Keokuk, Iowa when she was one month old. She graduated from Keokuk High School in 1901 and then attended Bryn Mawr College, earning a B.A. degree in 1907.

Meigs began writing children's books while teaching English at St. Katherine's School in Davenport, Iowa. Her first book, The Kingdom of the Winding Road, was published in 1915. In 1922 The Windy Hill was a runner-up for the first Newbery Medal, awarded by the American Library Association for the previous year's "most distinguished contribution to American literature for children". She was again runner-up in 1929 for Clearing Weather and in 1933 for Swift Rivers. Runner-up works from the early years of the Newbery Award are now called Newbery Honor Books, and are authorized to be designated as such.

Meigs won a prize competition sponsored by publisher Little, Brown and Co., and her winning submission, The Trade Wind, was published in 1927. Subsequently Little, Brown and Co. published more of her works, including children's biographies of Louisa May Alcott and Jane Addams. The Alcott biography, Invincible Louisa: The Story of the Author of Little Women, won the Newbery Medal in 1934.

In 1932, she became a professor of English at her alma mater, Bryn Mawr. During World War II she took a leave of absence, working for the War Department for three years and then returning to Bryn Mawr, where she remained until she retired in 1950. After leaving Bryn Mawr Meigs taught writing at the New School of Social Research in New York City and served as the lead editor and a contributing writer for A Critical History of Children's Literature, published in 1953, which has been called "a landmark in the field of children's literature". Meigs also supervised a revision re-issued in 1969.

In her long career as a writer, Meigs produced over 30 fiction works for children, two plays, two biographies, and several books and articles for adults, and championed the cause of a more serious approach to literature intended for younger readers.

Cornelia Meigs died at Havre de Grace, Maryland, on September 10, 1973.

The Windy Hill...

Oliver and Janet, teens visiting a wealthy cousin in a quiet seaside town, quickly realize that something is not right. Their cousin Jasper barely acknowledges their arrival and is obviously nervous and preoccupied. They soon realize that they have stumbled upon a family mystery that not only involves their cousin, but has somehow spread a gloomy quiet, like the stillness before a thunder storm, throughout the hills and farms of the Medford Valley.

Befriending a mysterious local beekeeper and his daughter, they listen to the beekeeper's tales of the Medford Valley's past and accounts of incidents from the lives of earlier generations of their own family. From the beekeeper's stories and scattered clues they discover the secret behind the sullen depression and suppressed anger that hangs over the valley, and set out to correct the consequences of greed, resentment and jealousy that have been festering for three generations.