by Amy Gary
The extraordinary life of the woman behind the beloved children's classics Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny comes alive in this fascinating biography of Margaret Wise Brown.
Margaret's books have sold millions of copies all over the world, but few people know that she was at the center of a children's book publishing revolution. Her whimsy and imagination fueled a steady stream of stories, book ideas, songs, and poems and she was renowned for her prolific writing and business savvy, as well as her stunning beauty and endless thirst for adventure.
Margaret started her writing career by helping to shape the curriculum for the Bank Street School for children, making it her mission to create stories that would rise above traditional fairy tales and allowed girls to see themselves as equal to boys. At the same time, she also experimented endlessly with her own writing. Margaret would spend days researching subjects, picking daisies, cloud gazing, and observing nature, all in an effort to precisely capture a child's sense of awe and wonder as they discovered the world.
Clever, quirky, and incredibly talented, Margaret embraced life with passion, lived extravagantly off of her royalties, went on rabbit hunts, and carried on long and troubled love affairs with both men and women. Among them were two great loves in Margaret's life. One was a gender-bending poet and the ex-wife of John Barrymore. She went by the stage name of Michael Strange and she and Margaret had a tempestuous yet secret relationship, at one point living next door to each other so that they could be together. After the dissolution of their relationship and Michael's death, Margaret became engaged to a younger man, who also happened to be the son of a Rockefeller and a Carnegie. But before they could marry Margaret died unexpectedly at the age of forty-two, leaving behind a cache of unpublished work and a timeless collection of books that would go on become classics in children's literature.
In In the Great Green Room, author Amy Gary captures the eccentric and exceptional life of Margaret Wise Brown, and drawing on newly-discovered personal letters and diaries, reveals an intimate portrait of a creative genius whose unrivaled talent breathed new life in to the literary world.
The extraordinary life of the woman behind the beloved children's classics Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny comes alive in this fascinating biography of Margaret Wise Brown.
Margaret's books have sold millions of copies all over the world, but few people know that she was at the center of a children's book publishing revolution. Her whimsy and imagination fueled a steady stream of stories, book ideas, songs, and poems and she was renowned for her prolific writing and business savvy, as well as her stunning beauty and endless thirst for adventure.
Margaret started her writing career by helping to shape the curriculum for the Bank Street School for children, making it her mission to create stories that would rise above traditional fairy tales and allowed girls to see themselves as equal to boys. At the same time, she also experimented endlessly with her own writing. Margaret would spend days researching subjects, picking daisies, cloud gazing, and observing nature, all in an effort to precisely capture a child's sense of awe and wonder as they discovered the world.
Clever, quirky, and incredibly talented, Margaret embraced life with passion, lived extravagantly off of her royalties, went on rabbit hunts, and carried on long and troubled love affairs with both men and women. Among them were two great loves in Margaret's life. One was a gender-bending poet and the ex-wife of John Barrymore. She went by the stage name of Michael Strange and she and Margaret had a tempestuous yet secret relationship, at one point living next door to each other so that they could be together. After the dissolution of their relationship and Michael's death, Margaret became engaged to a younger man, who also happened to be the son of a Rockefeller and a Carnegie. But before they could marry Margaret died unexpectedly at the age of forty-two, leaving behind a cache of unpublished work and a timeless collection of books that would go on become classics in children's literature.
In In the Great Green Room, author Amy Gary captures the eccentric and exceptional life of Margaret Wise Brown, and drawing on newly-discovered personal letters and diaries, reveals an intimate portrait of a creative genius whose unrivaled talent breathed new life in to the literary world.
Reviews-
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August 1, 2016
Gary has been researching Goodnight Moon author Margaret Wise Brown since 1990, when she discovered a trove of unpublished manuscripts, songs, letters, and diaries from Brown.
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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February 1, 2017
A prolific writer of children's books, including Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny, Margaret Wise Brown (1910-52) led the unsettled, eccentric life one might expect of a poet. Gary, who has studied Brown since 1990, captures the author's madcap refusal to grow up that endeared her to friends and may have helped her writing. While Gary does trace her subject's professional accomplishments, she focuses on the personal. Raised in a privileged but troubled family, Brown was adventurous and imaginative at a young age, preferring sports, animals, and her friends to school. After graduating from Hollins College in Roanoke, VA, she moved to New York and took a job editing children's books. Influenced by Gertrude Stein, she tried writing herself, embracing real-world stories for children, and found she had considerable talent, even though she didn't particularly like children. After that, her reputation and success grew, although she never wrote any "grown-up" literature of consequence. Brown's complicated personal life included numerous romantic adventures, most notably a ten-year relationship with poet/playwright/actress Blanche Oelrichs, former wife of John Barrymore. VERDICT Recommended for readers interested in children's literature and author biographies. [See Prepub Alert, 7/18/16.]--Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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The Wall Street Journal
"In a biography full of lively anecdotes, this one stands out for the way it encapsulates what must have made Margaret Wise Brown so enchanting to her friends and colleagues.... If the measure of a good life story is the longing it leaves in the reader to have known the subject, this one more than succeeds."
- USA Today "Margaret Wise Brown's story reads as a stirring evocation of a woman who insisted on freedom in her art and in her love life."
- The Washington Post "In the Great Green Room brings renewed attention to the contrast between Margaret Wise Brown's private life and her status as a celebrated children's author. Drawing on personal letters and diaries, author Amy Gary draws a colorful portrait."
- Slate "Goodnight Moon is less a story than an incantation. It summons a cocoon around reader and listener, a sensation of being pulled out of the hurly-burly of the world into a pocket of charmed tranquility. Amy Gary's new biography, In the Great Green Room: The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown, replicates this spell for adult readers."
