Zilpha Keatley Snyder dies at 87; wrote fantastical children's books

Zilpha Keatley Snyder, the author of dozens of children's and young-adult novels centered on lonely kids with rich but chilling fantasy lives, has died. She was 87.

Snyder, who lived in a Marin County retirement community, died Oct. 7 in San Francisco of a stroke, according to her publisher, Simon & Schuster.

With more than 40 books to her credit, Snyder won the Newbery Honor – one of the top awards in children's literature – three times. Her winning novels were "The Headless Cupid," "The Witches of Worm" and "The Egypt Game" – a 1967 story involving preteens who secretly re-create ancient Egyptian rituals at a makeshift shrine as a child killer lurks in the neighborhood.

For Snyder, it was, like many of her books, drawn from bits and pieces of her own life. As a girl in rural Ventura County, she was entranced with Egypt and, for a time, walked to school each morning as an incarnation of the elegant and mysterious queen Nefertiti.

Conjuring images of gargoyles, witches, sinister cats and harpies whose faces "were those of lovely young maidens except for their wild cruel eyes and the blood that continually smeared their mouths and dripped from their small, sharp teeth," Snyder frequently was asked where she got her ideas.

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