In The Great Green Room

It is always interesting to read about someone famous.  We take a voyeuristic enjoyment in reading about people's personal lives.  Reading the biography of Margaret Wise Brown is fascinating.  There is so much more to this seemingly quiet woman's life than I could ever have imagined.

Margaret Wise Brown much too young.  She missed out on so many wonderful life experiences.  But also she missed out on knowing how famous her children's book, Goodnight Moon would eventually become.  Reading about her life and career that was my one feeling of regret on her behalf.  IF she could only know how much of an impact her books have had on children for so many, many years.

Margaret was a woman who liked to live life to the fullest.  She was full of passion with an incredible yearning for adventure.   She loved nature, both picking flowers and going on rabbit hunts with the Buckram Beagles.

She was a beautiful woman.  Though she was insecure in her ability to have a successful relationship, she had a few love affairs, with both men and women.  She had a long time affair with Bill Gaston, who never divorced his wife,  and with the ex-wife of John Barrymore, who went by the stage name, Michael Strange.

Margaret studied young children and found out what made them enjoy stories, what kept their interest and what did not.  She wrote stories about the world from the perspective of a child.  She worked with the newly opened, Bank Street School, to shape their curriculum and start their children's book publishing business.  She wrote for Walt Disney studios and she was at the forefront of Golden Books publishing, with a ongoing contract with them for four manuscripts a year.  She was a prolific writer and a savvy business woman.  She wrote poetry, songs and many unpublished manuscripts.  Her dream of becoming an author of adult novels was never realized, but she has gone down in history has someone who helped form the children's literature we still read today, taking the genre beyond the traditional Grimm's style fairy tales.

Author, Amy Gary has brought Margaret Wise Brown to life in this wonderful biography.