Happy Birthday!

The Writer's Almanac from American Public Media: "It's the birthday of Margaret Wise Brown, born in Brooklyn, New York (1910). She wanted to become a writer as a young woman, and she once took a creative writing class from Gertrude Stein. But she had a hard time coming up with story ideas, so she went into education. She got a job researching the way that children learn to use language and found that children love language with patterns of sound and rhythm. She also found that young children have a special attachment to words for objects they can see and touch, like shoes and socks and bowls and bathtubs."

And thus, Goodnight, Moon. But also check out Wait Till the Moon is Full, a lovely book with illustrations by Garth Williams. I am less fond of The Runaway Bunny, though Clement Hurd's illustrations are, as always, appealing: I just don't much care for those omnipotent-mama stories. Still, childhood would be poorer all around without Margaret Wise Brown.