More indicative of Hamilton's later stories was The Planet Of Junior Brown (1971), a tale of consolation as unhappy boys weave make-believe and reality together to create their own world and happiness. Instead, they were stories of insight and imagination, rural as much as urban, as in Zeely (1967), about a black girl and her fantasies around the beautiful swine shepherdess descended from an African queen and, in a different style altogether, The House Of Dies Drear (1968), a gothic fantasy about the descendant of slaves, who guards treasure inherited from an abolitionist. From the beginning, her stories were very different from the gritty realism of many of her contemporaries they were not problem novels exploring deprived inner-city childhoods. Hamilton had been published in the US for the previous 10 years, making a reputation for herself as one of the few writers for black children. MC Higgins, The Great was published in Britain in 1975 as one of the first in the exciting new wave of imported African-American children's books that flourished from the 1970s onwards. Hamilton's positioning of MC allows him to see things differently, and she tells his family story poetically. As he sways over the valley, with its open-cast mine and slag heap that threatens his home, he unravels his thoughts about the world. The hero and narrator of MC Higgins, The Great, he tells his story from his vantage point at the top of a 40ft pole. The internationally renowned American author Virginia Hamilton, who has died aged 65 of breast cancer, created one of the most arresting images in a children's book, MC Higgins.

Her Stories by Virginia Hamilton