Eleanor Cameron; Librarian and Author

Eleanor Butler Cameron, a former Los Angeles librarian who won a National Book Award for one of her 17 imaginative children’s books, has died at the age of 84.

Cameron, who won the award in 1974 for “The Court of the Stone Children,” died Friday in Monterey, Calif.

Born Eleanor Butler in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Cameron did not turn to writing until she became a middle-aged housewife with two sons who begged for space stories with magic in them.

The result was a series of children’s books beginning in 1954 with “The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet.”

Before she began writing children’s books, she had written one adult novel, “The Unheard Music” in 1950. Based on the experiences of a librarian, the book was rated by a Times critic as “a generally fine and perceptive story . . . a warm and understanding first novel.”

Cameron studied at UCLA and the Art Center School of Los Angeles. She joined the Los Angeles Public Library in 1930 and later worked as a research librarian for advertising agencies and other Los Angeles-based companies.

In addition to her children’s books and novel, Cameron wrote two collections of literary criticism about children’s literature and lectured extensively for the Library of Congress.

In one of those collections, “The Seed and the Vision,” she explained that a good children’s book is first a good book, with sound internal logic, credible characters and imaginative prose.

The aim, she wrote, is to make children “literate in a way that means reading will affect their lives, will give them a view of the human condition they would never have without it, that will become a companion to them all the rest of their days.”

Cameron’s other awards included National Book Award runner-up in 1976 for “To the Green Mountains” and the Kerlan Award in 1985 for her body of work.