Today is the birthday of Margaret Wise Brown. If she were with us, she'd be the coolest 97-year-old great-granny around because she could spin a yarn to captivate any kind of kid. Brown is the author of the eternally popular and ubiquitous Goodnight Moon, the Big Red Barn, Runaway Bunny, Wait 'til the Moon is Full, The Golden Egg Book, The Important Book....She is the author of so many children's books and was so popular in her time that she took pseudonyms to create the illusion that one writer wasn't saturating the market--that one woman wasn't the market! Brown helped make picture books popular--marketable--because she asked children to help her determine good books from bad ones. Brown also understood that kids see books as tactile objects, things to be touched and turned and tossed and tasted. She gave her audience what they wanted. (See Robin's Room, for example.) Brown gave kids books with pictures and enormously powerful truths without fanfare, excuse, or apology. Kids liked that. Brown was a creative woman whose muse was no slave to deadlines. She left a legacy of wisdom and truth. If only her publisher would capture the complete Margaret Wise Brown in one volume so her readers wouldn't have to search for old titles in basements and bookstalls.
Her first published work, When the Wind Blew, fetches around $9,000 these days. This is a wonderful story of a solitary elderly woman who devotes her life to her cats. Then, one cold and windy night when she has a toothache but has no place to turn for help, the smallest cat in the bunch climbs into bed with her and rests himself against her cheek like a little hot water bottle. The least of these comes to the rescue. We all have our place and our gifts; we have only to give them. Thank you, Margaret Wise Brown, for yours.
4 Comments
I was planning to start this with "Goodnight, Rummy. Goodnight, Condi." But then I remembered how it started:
ReplyDeleteIn the great green room
There was a telephone
And a red balloon
And a picture of the cow jumping over the moon
And there were three little bears sitting on chairs
And two little kittens
And a pair of mittens
And a little toy house
And a young mouse
And a comb and a brush and a bowl full of mush
And a quiet old lady who was whispering "hush"
Goodnight room
Goodnight moon
Good night cow jumping over the moon
Goodnight light
And the red balloon
Goodnight bears
Goodnight chairs
Goodnight kittens
And goodnight mittens
Goodnight clocks
And goodnight socks
Goodnight little house
And goodnight mouse
Goodnight comb
And goodnight brush
Goodnight nobody
Goodnight mush
And goodnight to the old lady whispering "hush"
Goodnight stars
Goodnight air
Goodnight noises everywhere
I read it to four kids, separately, for twenty years, at bedtime. Sometimes the older teenage boys would object, but... "I'M THE DADDY, THAT'S WHY!!"
Hey, Greg...
ReplyDeleteThanks for that! Twenty years...Wow. I used to read The Big Red Barn to Adella, and she'd scream her head off when I got to the part about the animals going to sleep. She knew I was setting her up!
Very nice post. My kids loved her books.
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by, Dana. Adella once bought me a copy of Sailor Dog at a book fair so I'd have my own! It's great when kids love the right things.
ReplyDeleteThanks for being here.