ph_brown bk_bunny
bk_good bk_color

Family daydreamer, prankster, and storyteller Margaret Wise Brown was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1910. She enrolled in the teacher training program at Bank Street College and became a protégé of founder Lucy Sprague Mitchell who changed ideas about educating and writing for the very young. Her ideas encouraged “here and now” stories for children six and under. Brown became a charter member of the Bank Street Writers Laboratory, a training workshop for the here-and-now vein. She also worked as an editor for the William R. Scott publishing company, founded out of the idea, putting her in a position to publish her own work and champion the innovative work of others. Clement Hurd, Leonard Weisgard, and others joined Brown in an impassioned quest to renew the picture book genre. Brown authored more than one hundred volumes but is most known for “the great green room” of Goodnight Moon and Runaway Bunny, both childhood classics. Brown lived a glamorous, whirlwind private life and died suddenly of an embolism in the south of France at the age of forty-two (1952).

Subscribe to Fresh Bookology for FREE!

Receive a weekly e-mail pointing out articles published that week as well as curated children’s books and reading news.

Search

Recent Articles