Margaret Wise Brown

My amazing mother loves children's books and has some amazing collections. One of them is a collection of Margaret Wise Brown books. She has everyone ever published. You may know Margaret Wise Brown best for Goodnight Moon or The Little Island but she wrote over 150 (I think) books and my mom has over 200 copies of them (including everyone that has ever been published - did I say that already?) I know it took her quite awhile to collect all of these and she has some fun stories behind them all. She told me her favorite one is called The Man in the Manhole written by Juniper Sage (Margaret Wise Brown wrote under that name as well as Golden McDonald (She won a Caldecott Award for The Little Island written by Golden McDonald - they since have published it under her real name)). Anyway, she found The Man in the Manhole at a little antique shop in a Chicago subburb amongst a few dozen books for $4.50. She'd never seen it before anywhere and she knew these people had no idea what they had. She hurried and snagged it and was so happy to get it. She did find it on Amazon the other day for about $350 (I think) but it was the first time she'd ever seen it anywhere. The only copy she doesn't own is one of The Little Fur Family that was originally published in real rabbit fur. She has one in fake fur but not an original. She found one the other day on e-bay that was currently going for $1000 but she didn't get it.

Anyway, Margaret Wise Brown led a pretty amazing life. Her biography "Awakened By the Moon" is next on my too read list next. She was engaged to a Carnegie and a Rockafeller in her lifetime and was engaged to one of them when she died suddenly at an early age from a blood clot (I think - I really should have checked my sources better before I wrote this). Anyway, after her death her sister found an old trunk of hers full of manuscripts and ideas for more books. Many of them were published after her death including this one that is due to come out this month.

Anyway, her birthday is in April and so the Provo Library is doing a little display on her from April-May and they're using my mom's books. If you're in the area you should check it out. It's kind of fun to see! I know it looks like a lot of books but it's really only a fraction of how many she actually owns!

The top row on this one has books she was commissioned to write that have photos by Ylla. These two windows show what some of her books looked like when they were first published and how they looked when they were republished many years later.

The Hidden House is about this tiny house she lived in in New York City that was sort of hidden between all these big buildings.

Here's a bunch of Golden Books she wrote.

These are her most famous books: Goodnight Moon (in a few languages), Runaway Bunny and The Little Island.

These are all from her Noisy Book series.

Thanks indeed! Go check it out!

Post Edit: My mom cleared up a few things - her birthday is actually in May (23rd) and she was engaged to James Rockefeller but he was also descended from the Carnegie family. Thanks mom!