Anne T. Eaton, in her New York Times review, took it even further: “Here is childhood caught unawares, busy about its own affairs, artless and unselfconscious. The pictures and the prayer itself speak to children in a child’s own language; older people will find this little
volume beautiful, moving and deeply satisfying.” A similar observation was made a little more than a decade later by Esther Averill in her look back at the past twenty years of Caldecott Medal winners, “What Is a Picture Book?” But, with hindsight, she was critical of
the same qualities critics in 1944 had noted as commendable. Averill wrote: “The reverent, mystical mood the prayer might awaken in a young person is not sustained by drawings of such a realistic nature. They appeal more to adults who enjoy looking with sentimental eyes at childhood scenes.”
Averill’s critique offers the first direct charge of sentimentality I have found in print; however, Frances Clarke Sayers said much the same thing in 1945, but with a positive spin. At the time, Sayers was chair of ALA’s Children’s Library Association (now ALSC) and as such had also been a member of the (then-combined) Newbery–Caldecott committee that selected Prayer for a Child. Her brief statement on behalf of the committee, published in the ALA Bulletin, spoke only of the book from the perspective of the “sentimental eyes” of
the adults. “The appeal of her drawing lies in a softness of line which catches something of the wistfulness and tenderness that assail one who watches children unobserved. She manages to convey the pathos of a child observed by adults. It is this quality that gives
her pictures of children such appeal for many people.” In other words, the book was a clear sentimental favorite — without apology.