Frances Mallow Taylor, Ed.D.
Head Librarian, Saint Francis of Assisi Research Library
Frances is from an extended family of educators, over several generations, including a librarian. Her involvement with the Saint Francis of Assisi Research Library, when asked by Br. Allen A. White, O.S.F. to serve as the head librarian, was a natural. Although raised a protestant, she was always interested in the story of Saint Francis and collected books and memorabilia of him during her lifetime. While on a trip to Tuscany in 2008, she and her friend, Cathy Sullivant, assistant librarian at the library, made a pilgrimage to the Basilica di San Francesco in Assisi and several other Franciscan sites connected to both Francis and Clare.
Her career as a teacher began after graduating from Baylor and continued through forty-three years as a classroom teacher, a reading specialist, an ESL teacher of children and adults, an administrator of an urban bilingual school, and an adjunct and visiting professor in the School of Education at University of Houston. She earned her Ed.D. from Texas A&M University while doing research on the writing development of the kindergarten children for whom English was a second language that she was teaching, in collaboration with two kindergarten teachers.
A published author, she co-wrote Framing Literacy: Teaching/Learning in K-8 Classrooms and Teaching Every Child: A Guide for Literacy Teams Grades 1-3 with Dr. Leslie Patterson. She continued her writing with a true story about her encounter with a pigeon in Hello Bird! This book was for children and written in collaboration with Lynne Dozier, her friend and later writing partner. Involvement with the establishment of Hope Center Houston, a day center for people who are homeless in northwest Houston, led to a book, co-edited with Jodie Leach, Hope Heals, with stories written by volunteers, board members, clergy, and the men and women who were being served at the Hope Center.
Her heart has always been with people who are poor, disenfranchised, forgotten, and in need. For fifteen years, she was a part of the medical team from St. Mark’s Episcopal Church serving the people in Honduras from the coastal mountains on the border of Guatemala. These years of experience not only brought Frances closer to God, but like Saint Francis of Assisi, even more aware of and in empathy with the poor of the world.
