Suzanne's Mom's Blog

Today I decided to share this GoodReads report on a biography I read recently.

“I really liked this biography of the prolific and influential writer for children Margaret Wise Brown.

“Amy Gary is not primarily a biographer. In her earlier jobs, she was head of publishing for Lucasfilms and Pixar. But curiosity led her to a treasure trove of unpublished papers that the sister of Margaret Wise Brown had stored away in the attic after Brown’s death at 42 from an embolism.

“Margaret Wise Brown not only wrote the seminal Goodnight, Moon, which after a slow start sold more that 48 million copies worldwide, but many other titles you might recognize without knowing they were by her. At this time of year, I always pull out Home for a Bunny, for example.

“Brown wrote for a variety of publishers, including Harper, Disney, and Golden Books. But it wasn’t that she was a warm and fuzzy child-loving, motherly type. It was more that she never stopped being a child. She thought like a child. She fit in well with the cutting-edge child-development philosophy of the Bank Street School, one of her first employers in New York, but even before she knew about that, she sensed that books featuring repetition and descriptions of very familiar objects would please young children. And she tested everything on her audience.

“Gary’s access to Brown’s papers makes this a rich biography of a wild and original, nature-loving girl who became a wild and original, nature-loving adult. Despite a life of privilege in both New York and the south (she was a frequent visitor to her cousins’ Manhattan-sized island, Cumberland, which is now a national park), nothing could dampen her ability to see everything around her in terms of a story for kids.

“I think you will be interested in how Brown met some great illustrators and writers and nurtured their talents — and in how she came up with innovations like furry books and records in book pockets. She was valued for her work, which was satisfying, but her love life with both men and women she knew were bad for her kept her from being happy for long.

“I really appreciated Gary’s long epilogue, in which she tied up every possible loose end. And the forward by Brown’s fiance, James Stillman Rockefeller Jr., was a lovely way to capture Brown’s vibrant way of talking about, thinking about, whatever she saw.”