Margaret Wise Brown

Margaret Wise Brown (23 May 1910 – 13 November 1952) was a prolific American author of children's literature, including the books Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny, both illustrated by Clement Hurd.

Biography

The middle child of three whose parents suffered from an unhappy marriage, Brown was born in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York,^[1] and in 1923 attended boarding school in Woodstock, Connecticut, while her parents were living in Canterbury. She began attending Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Massachusetts, in 1926, where she did well in athletics. After graduation in 1928, Brown went on to Hollins College in Roanoke, Virginia.

Following her graduation with a B.A. in English^[1] from Hollins in 1932, Brown worked as a teacher, and also studied art. It was while working at the Bank Street Experimental School in New York City that she started writing books for children. Her first book was When the Wind Blew, published in 1937 by Harper & Brothers.

Brown then went on to develop her Here and Now stories, and later the Noisy Book series while employed as an editor at William R. Scott. Her popular book The Little Fur Family, illustrated by Garth Williams, was published in 1946. Also in 1946, Brown wrote The Little Island under the pseudonym Golden MacDonald (illustrated by Leonard Weisgard), which won the Caldecott Medal in 1947. In the early 1950s, she wrote several books for the Little Golden Books series including The Color Kittens, Mister Dog and Sailor Dog.

Brown's books utilize a straightforward voice that never speaks down to children, and also employ a gentle wit which keeps parents entertained. Instead of the fairy tales and adventure stories that previously defined children’s literature, Brown focuses on quiet moments and gentle observations. Although her books are largely populated with talking animals, her characters display a humanity that continues to grab the interest of beginning readers.

Brown (nicknamed "Brownie" by her friends), dated the Prince of Spain, Juan Carlos, and in the summer of 1940 began a long-term relationship with Michael Strange (a.k.a. Blanche Oelrichs), poet/playwright, actress, and the former wife of John Barrymore. The relationship, which began as a mentoring one, eventually became romantic, and included co-habitating at 10 Gracie Square, in Manhattan, beginning in 1943.^[2] Strange, who was twenty years Brown's senior, died in 1950.

In 1952 Brown met James Stillman Rockefeller Jr. at a party, and they became engaged. Later that year, while on a book tour in Nice, France, she unexpectedly died at 42 of an embolism, two weeks after emergency surgery for an ovarian cyst. (Kicking up her leg to show the doctor how well she was feeling ironically caused a blood clot that had formed in her leg to dislodge and travel to her heart.)^[3] By the time of Brown's death, she had authored well over one hundred books. Her ashes were scattered at her island home, "The Only House" in Vinalhaven, Maine.^[4]

Brown bequeathed the royalties to many of her books including Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny to Albert Clarke, the son of a neighbor who was nine years old when she died. In 2000, reporter Joshua Prager detailed in the Wall Street Journal the troubled life of Mr. Clarke, who has squandered the millions of dollars the books have earned him and who believes that Wise Brown was his mother, a claim others dismiss.^[3]

Brown left behind over 70 unpublished manuscripts. Her sister, Roberta Brown Rauch, after unsuccessfully trying to sell them, kept them in a cedar trunk for decades. In 1991, Amy Gary of WaterMark Inc., rediscovered the paper-clipped bundles of the more than 500 typewritten pages and set about getting the stories published.^[5]

Many of Brown's books have been re-released with new illustrations decades after their original publication. Many more of her books are still in print with the original illustrations. Her books have been translated into several languages; biographies on Brown for children have been written by Leonard S. Marcus (Harper Paperbacks, 1999) and Jill C. Wheeler (Checkerboard Books, 2006).

Bibliography (selected)

• When the Wind Blew (Harper & Brothers, 1937)
• The Runaway Bunny (Harper & Row, 1942)
• They All Saw It, illustrated by Ylla (Harper & Brothers, 1944)
• The Little Fur Family (Harper & Brothers, 1946)
• The Little Island (Doubleday, 1946)
• Goodnight Moon (Harper & Brothers, 1947)
• The Sleepy Little Lion, illustrated by Ylla (Harper & Brothers, 1947)
• Wait till the Moon is Full (Harper & Brothers, 1948)
• The Important Book (Harper & Brothers, 1949)
• The Color Kittens (Little Golden Books, 1949)
• My World (Harper, 1949)
• O Said the Squirrel, illustrated by Ylla (London: Harvill Press, 1950)
• Fox Eyes (Pantheon, 1951)
• The Duck, illustrated by Ylla (Harper & Brothers; London: Harvill Press, 1952)
• Mister Dog: The Dog Who Belonged to Himself (Golden Press, 1952)
• Scuppers the Sailor Dog (Little Golden Books, 1953)
• Big Red Barn (Addison-Wesley, 1954)
• Three Little Animals (Harper & Brothers, 1956)
• Home for a Bunny (Golden Press, 1956)
• Another Important Book (Joanna Cotler Books, 1999) — published posthumously

Notes

References

• "Beyond the Top 50: Toddler Tales," USA Today (Sept. 12, 1996).
• "Brown, Margaret Wise 1910-1952." Something About the Author vol. 100 (1999), pp. 35-39.
• Churnin, Nancy. "Goodnight and Sweet Dreams," The Dallas Morning News (Jan. 5, 2001).
• Fleischman, John. "Shakespeare of the Sandbox Set," Parents vol. 63 (July 1988), pp. 92-96.
• Groth, Chuck. "An Heirloom for Fans of Goodnight Moon," St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Feb. 19, 1995).
• Hurd, Clement. "Remembering Margaret Wise Brown," Horn Book (October 1983).
• Marcus, Leonard S., Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon, Beacon Press (Feb. 1992). ISBN 978-0807070482
• Mitchell, Lucy Sprague Mitchell. "Margaret Wise Brown, 1910-1952," Bank Street (1953).
• Pate, Nancy. "Good Gosh: Goodnight Moon is 50," Orlando Sentinel (Feb. 24, 1997).
• Pichey, Martha. "Bunny Dearest," Vanity Fair magazine, (December 2000), pp. 172-187.

External links

• Official website
• fan site
• Papers archived at Hollins University
• Runaway Bunny Concerto website