My aunt Elaine Moss, who has died aged 96, spent her working life immersed in the world of children’s books, not only advising publishers on which stories to print, but also writing books herself.
She was born in London to Maude (nee Simmons) and her husband, Percy Levy, a metal broker in the City. Educated at St Paul’s girls’ school in London, she then read English literature at Bedford College, London (now part of Royal Holloway, University of London), before qualifying first as a teacher and then as a librarian.
After a spell teaching at a Surrey boarding school she married John Moss, a chartered surveyor, in 1950, and while raising their daughters, Valerie and Alison, in Hampstead, north London, she worked as personal assistant to the publisher Grace Hogarth at Constable Young Books. This led her into a freelance role, first at Constable and then with other publishers, in which she read and reviewed children’s books on their behalf, advising them on whether they should be brought into print.
In 1961 she edited Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels to make it accessible for a younger audience and, having begun to write herself, she had her first children’s story, Wait and See Book, published three years later, followed in 1965 by Twirly.
In 1970, the year she became the selector for the National Book League’s Children’s Books of the Year awards, she began to contribute articles and interviews to Signal, a journal about children’s literature, and in 1975 she had another children’s book, Polar, published.
Two years later Elaine won the Eleanor Farjeon award for her outstanding contribution to the world of children’s books, and in 1986 she brought out her memoirs, Part of the Pattern. Throughout the 1980s she was also a volunteer at Fleet Primary school in Hampstead, working in the library and reading to children. She also sold children’s books from a street barrow in north London.
Her last couple of years became more difficult as her health declined, but she continued to enjoy the company of her family and friends, and her interest in literature and the world at large remained.
John died in 1997. She is survived by Valerie and Alison, and two granddaughters, Alex and Georgie.
