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As an internationally known authority on children's literature, Mitzi Myers wrote more than 75 scholarly articles and book reviews.
The longtime UCLA lecturer presented papers at scores of scholarly conferences, edited anthologies of children's literature and contributed entries on children's literature to the Encyclopedia Americana and the Cambridge Companion to Children's Literature.
Over the years, Myers amassed a personal library of some 35,000 books, many of them rare and nearly all of them annotated.
"You couldn't even walk through the house, she had so many books," said her sister, Patsy Myers. "They were like children to her."
That explains why, when a fire ripped through Mitzi Myers' Fullerton home in August 2000, she repeatedly reentered the burning house to save her precious books.
Most of the books were lost, along with the manuscripts for two books she was writing and two other volumes she was editing.
Myers, who suffered second- and third-degree burns and had been on medical leave from UCLA since then, died at her home in Anaheim Hills on Nov. 5 of complications from the pneumonia she contracted in the wake of the fire that left...