SOURCE CITATION
"(Anne) Eve(lyn) Bunting." Major Authors and Illustrators for Children and Young Adults, 2nd ed., 8 vols. Gale Group, 2002. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007.
Photograph provided by Scholastic, Inc.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Eve Bunting has been a children's author for several decades. Using the pen names A. E. Bunting and Evelyn Bolton, she has written in many genres, from science fiction to romance to horse stories, and has written both young adult novels and children's picture books. Her efforts have garnered her several awards over the years. In addition to her many book-length achievements, she has also contributed stories to basal reader series for several educational publishers.
Bunting was born in Maghera, Northern Ireland, where her father was a well-to-do merchant and her family was held in high regard by the rest of the townspeople. When she was nine, Bunting was sent to boarding school, where she often entertained the other girls by telling stories and tall tales in the evenings. "It was certainly there that I developed my life-long love of books and reading," she explained in Junior Literary Guild. Bunting also stated in Writer magazine that her talents benefitted from the fact that "the educational system in Ireland is geared to the 'essay answer' in examinations, and at that I had always excelled." Nevertheless, she did not aspire to a writing career during her childhood.
In the early 1940s, Bunting attended Methodist College in Belfast, Northern Ireland. After her graduation in 1945, she went on to study at Queen's University in the same city. There she met Edward Davison Bunting, who became her husband in 1951. After their marriage, the couple moved to Scotland, where they started their family. In 1959, Bunting, her husband, and their three children immigrated to the United States, living first in San Francisco, California, then settling in Pasadena. .
Once in her new country, Bunting noticed that a local community college was offering a class in writing for publication, and she decided to sign up. As she described in Writer, "I find myself sometimes thinking what different turns my life might have taken had I not seen that junior college brochure." By 1972, Bunting had published her first book for children, The Two Giants. The Two Giants concerned legendary Irish and Scottish giants Finn McCool and Culcullan, and marked the beginning of Bunting's "Magic Circle" series, which also included the books Box, Fox, Ox, and the Peacock and We Need a Bigger Zoo.
As she did with The Two Giants, Bunting frequently uses either the stories or the scenery of her native Northern Ireland in her books. She explained in Writer that her book Ghost of Summer "is set in contemporary Northern Ireland with its political upheaval, its senseless hatreds and killings in the name of religion." Bunting elaborated in Junior Literary Guild: "I tried to write a story that children would find exciting but that would also show them the insidious horror of prejudice and the tragedy of a people torn apart by old hatreds. I tried to be objective, to be fair in showing both sides of the Irish problem. I hope no child reading it will know if the author is Protestant or Catholic. I hope no child reading it will care. I put into Ghost of Summer the feelings I have for Ireland; the love and the sorrow."
Bunting seems at home with all manner of characters and settings. Going against Cool Calvin, for instance, concerns a Mexican teenager who is an illegal alien in the United States. She also takes on controversial issues, such as teenage prostitution in If I Asked You, Would You Stay?, surrogate motherhood in Surrogate Sister, and teenage suicide in Face at the Edge of the World. As Bunting admitted in Writer: "I can spot a trend long before it comes...Ninety percent of my story seeds come from something I've read in my daily paper or in my weekly periodical." But in another Writer article, she cautioned against focusing on a particular topic to the detriment of writing a good story: "If you set out to write a book that you don't care about just because the subject matter is 'hot,' you're heading for disappointment." Concerning her book, Face at the Edge of the World, she elaborated: "This is not (just) a book about suicide. It is a story of love, of two people finding themselves and each other and making major decisions about their lives." .
Bunting has also won acclaim for her books for younger children. Some of her best-known books for young readers center on some of the lesser holidays, such as Mother's Day in The Mother's Day Mice, Thanksgiving in How Many Days to America?, and Halloween in Scary, Scary Halloween. But Bunting often approaches her subjects from unusual angles; for example, instead of a traditional story about the first Thanksgiving in the New World with Pilgrims and Indians, How Many Days to America? focuses on a Latin American family coming to the United States to escape the problems of living in a dictatorship. Similarly, in yet another article in Writer, Bunting recalled: "When I wrote Scary, Scary Halloween I knew of the numerous picture books about this popular holiday. What was there to say that hadn't already been said? So I did trick or treating from a cat's point of view, a mama cat, hiding under the house with her baby kittens, waiting fearfully for the monsters, who are the children in costumes, to leave. . . . A different angle? I think so, and the editor agreed."
In Coffin on a Case!, twelve-year-old Henry Coffin, the son of a private investigator, helps a gorgeous high-school girl in a dangerous attempt to find her kidnapped mother. As Henry narrates the story, aiming for the wit and swagger of his hero, Sam Spade, the mystery "unfolds skillfully and swiftly, aided by a breezy, humorous style," commented School Library Journal contributor Connie Tyrrell Burns. "This is a cheerful homage to hard-boiled detecting," noted Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books reviewer Deborah Stevenson, "with its own twists and charm." Other recent works by Bunting include SOS Titanic, a 1996 young adult novel about fifteen-year-old Barry O'Neill, bound from Ireland to America on the ill-fated ship when it hits an iceberg and begins to sink, and Moonstick: The Seasons of the Sioux, a 1997 children's story in which a young Dakota Indian boy illustrates how each new moon affects the surrounding nature and his people.
Bunting continues to offer her methods of success to other writers at various writing conferences. She told MAICYA, "I usually try to write picture books for children that make them think of such injustices as homelessness, prejudice or intolerance. I hope my books open doors for discussions with parents and teachers."
PERSONAL INFORMATION
Born Anne Evelyn Bolton, December 19, 1928, in Maghera, Northern Ireland; came to the United States, 1959, became U.S. citizen; daughter of Sloan Edmund (a postmaster) and Mary (a homemaker; maiden name, Canning) Bolton; married Edward Davison Bunting (a business executive), March 26, 1950; children: Christine, Sloan, Glenn. Education: Methodist College, Belfast, graduate, 1945; also attended Queen's University, 1946-48, and Pasadena City College, about 1959. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Protestant. Memberships: PEN International, Southern California Council on Writing for Children and Young People, Society of Children's Book Writers (board member). Addresses: Homeoff--Pasadena, CA. Agent--c/o Harcourt Brace, 525 B Street, San Diego, CA 92101.
CAREER
Freelance writer, mainly for young people, 1969--. Teacher of writing, University of California, Los Angeles, 1978, 1979, and at writer's conferences.
