Barbara Euphan Todd was an English writer most notable for her books for children about a scarecrow called.
Background
Todd was born at Arksey, near Doncaster, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the only child of an Anglican vicar, Thomas Todd, and Alice Maud Mary (née Bentham). She worked as a VAD during the First World War, then, after her father"s retirement, lived with her parents in Surrey and began writing.
Education
She was brought up in the village of Soberton in Hampshire and was educated at Street Catherine"s School, Bramley, near Guildford in Surrey.
Career
Todd"s ten novels about, a scarecrow who comes to life, are:, or The Scarecrow of Scatterbrook (1936) Again (1937) More About (1938) and Saucy Nancy (1947) Takes a Holiday (1949) Earthy Mangold and (1954) and the Railway Scarecrows (1955) at the Circus (1956) "s Treasure Ship (1958) Detective (1963). The novels have been illustrated by various artists, including Diana Stanley, Elisabeth Alldridge, Will Nickless and Jill Crockford. In the 1950s Todd collaborated with Denis and Mabel Constanduros on a series of radio plays for children.
A television series, Turns Detective, was made in 1953.
In 1967 five stories were narrated by Gordon Rollings in five episodes of the British Broadcasting Corporation children"s serial Jackanory. A second television series, adapted by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, was broadcast in 1978-1981.
A further television derivative was Down Under (1987-1989, Channel 4), in which the main character moves to New Zealand. Todd died in 1976 at a nursing home in Donnington, Berkshire.
Her stepdaughter, the anthropologist Ursula Betts, remembered her as "warm and kind" but recalled mainly her "dry - and sometimes wry - sense of humour," the hallmark of her books