The prolific children’s book author Margaret Wise Brown (1910-1952) began her most famous work, Goodnight Moon, by describing how In the great green room / There was a telephone / And a red balloon. This 1947 classic has sold 27 million copies and, along with such other bestsellers as The Runaway Bunny (1942), established Brown as the leading children’s author of her generation. But Brown’s own life was far from warm and fuzzy, and this new biography portrays her as a complicated creative soul.
Endowed with head-turning glamour and an unquenchable spirit for adventure, Brown was an obsessive writer, often jotting ideas on scraps of paper. She told her stories in a voice a child would want to hear, although she always claimed that children as a group didn’t interest her. But as biographer Amy Gary explains, Brown’s vivacious veneer masked a perpetual need for love and approval. While her professional life resulted in constant publication and widespread recognition, her emotional life perpetually ricocheted between ecstasy and desperation.
In the Great Green Room came about because of a fable-worthy coincidence. Gary had been the editor of publishing at Lucasfilm, and head of publishing at Pixar; in 1990, she was co-editor of a small publishing company and working with Margaret Wise Brown’s sister Roberta to reprint some of Brown’s “largely out-of-print and mostly forgotten books.” Almost nonchalantly, she asked Roberta if her sister, who had died suddenly, had left any unpublished or unfinished works.
Roberta said that her sister was working on a collection of poetry when she died, and that all those papers were stuffed in a trunk in the attic of her barn. Eventually, Gary got access to the trunk and was stunned to discover not only the unfinished book of poetry but hundreds of songs, music scores, and stories. She explains that she has spent the majority of her career since working in these papers, cataloguing them, reading Brown’s diaries and letters, studying her contracts, and discovering how closely she worked with the artists who illustrated her books. Amidst all the intensity, creativity, and turmoil she uncovered, Gary’s major discovery was that Margaret Wise Brown knew “how to live with awe.”
Although Leonard S. Marcus wrote a well-received biography of Brown in 1992, the enormous new stash of material justifies this new study. Both biographers were surprised at the gorgeous dynamo who wrote about kittens and mittens and bunnies. Brown came from a wealthy family that seems to have ignored her; after boarding school, she attended Hollins College in Virginia. Her favorite sport became beagling, a pastime that requires hunters to chase big bunnies (hares) over hill and dale on foot. After graduation from Hollins she lived in Greenwich Village and adopted a carefree life hosting parties for the Birdbrain Club, a group modeled after the Algonquin Round Table.
Brown’s first job was at Bank Street publishing, and this is where she began to create stories for children and work closely with illustrators. At the same time, she launched into a manic love life that encompassed failed relationships with both men and women. Most notable was her difficult affair in the 1940s with Michael Strange (Blanche Oelrichs), a socialite who was John Barrymore’s former wife.
In addition to her work at Bank Street, Brown wrote for Golden Books, Harper, and Walt Disney, where she edited fables that featured animals as main characters. As Gary writes, “What Margaret was completely incapable of writing was anything of interest for adults”—which was what she increasingly yearned to do. She wanted to write things with “literary merit” but “when she put her pencil to paper to write something for adults, another children’s story, poem, or song poured out. She couldn’t stop them even when she tried.”
One night, she had a detailed dream about saying good night to the things in her childhood room while a giant moon loomed outside her window. Goodnight Moon would be her biggest success, but the postwar years were altogether a highpoint in her career. For the publishing world, the baby boom launched a golden age of picture books for children, and Brown began to think more broadly about what was possible in book design. She created pop-ups, shaped books, and luminous dyes that glowed in the dark—novelties that publishers were eager to market.
Her dramatic personal life continued apace, and Gary documents Brown’s continuing and obsessive attraction for Michael Strange. After Strange died in 1950, Brown rebounded by falling in love with James Tillman “Pebble” Rockefeller, but before they could marry, she had appendicitis and died of an embolism. She was 42.
Amy Gary’s biography is written in an easy-flowing style and is certainly well-researched. But a major failing is that she rarely uses Margaret Wise Brown’s own words: Surely the myriad letters, diaries, and works that she has catalogued contain rich expressions that chronicle this writer’s life firsthand. How much more enchanting the story would have been if drawn from Margaret Wise Brown’s own creative wellspring.
Amy Henderson is historian emerita of the National Portrait Gallery.
