American children’s author Beverly Cleary
Credit: State Library Photograph Collection, Washington State Archives

April 2 is International Children’s Book Day, a celebration of the role that such books play in the lives of children and their development into adults. Some children’s books take readers to imaginary lands and on unusual adventures. Others may describe places and events that are familiar. Some children’s books address readers’ curiosity about life in other countries or in distant times. Biographies for children portray the lives and accomplishments of notable people. Some works, particularly those aimed at older children and adolescents, deal with the difficult situations often faced by individuals and society.

This International Children’s Book Day, World Book remembers the beloved American author Beverly Cleary, who died last week at the age of 104. Cleary wrote more than 40 children’s books. Her books are noted for their humor and for their realistic and natural dialogue. Cleary is best known for her series of books about the adventures of two youngsters named Henry Huggins and Ramona Quimby. The two characters and their friends live in a middle-class suburb of Portland, Oregon. In 1975, Cleary received the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award (now called the Children’s Literature Legacy Award) for her lifelong contributions to children’s literature.

Cleary has been praised as one of the first American authors to include children of divorced or single-parent families in her books. She won the 1984 Newbery Medal for Dear Mr. Henshaw (1983), a novel about a sixth-grade boy named Leigh Botts. The boy’s parents are divorced and he is attending a new school—situations that confront many of Cleary’s readers. In a series of letters Leigh writes to Mr. Henshaw, his favorite author, the reader learns of Leigh’s loneliness. One year older and much happier, Leigh appears in Cleary’s sequel, Strider (1991).

Beverly Atlee Bunn was born on April 12, 1916, in McMinnville, Oregon. She married Clarence T. Cleary in 1940. She began her adult career as a librarian. Cleary’s books reflected her desire to write about the kinds of rascals she met during read-aloud sessions in her library. One of her major complaints growing up was that she could not find funny books that featured kids like her. To solve the problem, Cleary wrote her first children’s book, Henry Huggins (1950). Ramona first appeared as a major character in Beezus and Ramona (1955). Cleary’s fantasy series about Ralph Mouse was inspired by her son’s love of motorcycles. The series began with The Mouse and the Motorcycle (1965).

Cleary wrote two autobiographies, A Girl from Yamhill (1988) and My Own Two Feet (1995), as well as the autobiographical children’s novel Emily’s Runaway Imagination (1961). She died on March 25, 2021.

July 28, 2016

English author Beatrix Potter stands outside her Lake District house near Ambleside in northwestern England.
Credit: © Popperfoto/Getty Images

The beloved English author and illustrator Beatrix Potter was born 150 years ago today in 1866. Potter became known for her charming children’s stories about small animals. Her books combine stories of adventure and humor with delicate water colors that capture the action and mood of the text. Potter’s first and most famous story is The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902), one of the first modern picture books. It has been translated into 36 languages and is one of the best-selling books of all time.

Potter wrote and illustrated about 25 books. In addition to Peter Rabbit, her characters include Squirrel Nutkin, Benjamin Bunny, Tom Kitten, Jemima Puddle-Duck, the Flopsy Bunnies, and Pigling Bland. Potter based many of her illustrations on the animals and rural landscapes of the Lake District of northwestern England.

However, the beautiful water colors for which Potter became famous were not her idea for the first book. Her original manuscript for The Tale of Peter Rabbit featured black-and-white woodcut images. Publishers rejected the book, preferring color illustrations, which had become popular in children’s books. Potter resisted, saying “I did not color the whole book for two reasons: the great expense of good color printing; and also the rather uninteresting color of a good many of the subjects which are most of them rabbit-brown and green.” In 1901, she published a private edition of the book that she distributed to family and friends. Potter soon realized her mistake, however, and provided color illustrations for a new edition with a publisher. The first 8,000 copies of the color edition sold out in advance of its publication in October 1902.

An astute businesswoman, Potter licensed her characters early on, and it was she, rather than her publishers, who pushed forward these ideas. In 1903, she designed, created, and registered a patent for a Peter Rabbit doll, making Peter Rabbit the world’s first licensed literary character. Potter also explored other merchandising ideas, including tea sets and bedroom slippers, and was closely involved in product development. She also invented a Peter Rabbit board game for two players in 1904.

Helen Beatrix Potter was born on July 28, 1866, in London to wealthy parents. She began drawing plants and animals as a child. Although Potter never went to school, her parents employed an art teacher and a governess. The Tale of Peter Rabbit was written for the five-year-old son of Potter’s governess. Two of Potter’s earliest artist models were her pet rabbits. Her first rabbit was Benjamin Bouncer, who enjoyed snacking on buttered toast and went on holiday with the Potter family in Scotland, where he was walked on a leash. Potter’s second rabbit, Peter Piper, performed tricks and accompanied Potter everywhere she went. Potter spent many hours sketching animals and plants, revealing an early fascination for the natural world that would continue throughout her life.

Although Potter became famous for her children’s stories, she was also a botanist and naturalist, as well as an adept scientific illustrator. She was invited to study at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, where she investigated the cultivation and growth of fungi and produced hundreds of detailed botanical drawings and water colors. By 1896, she had developed her own theory of how fungi spores reproduced and wrote a paper, On the Germination of the Spores of Agaricineae. Although the paper was never published, scientists still recognize Potter’s contribution to mycological (the branch of botany that deals with fungi) research today. Potter died on Dec. 22, 1943.

Further evidence of Potter’s diverse talents was recently discovered tucked away in some books at Melford Hall, a Sussex country house that Potter regularly visited. The Tudor home was the residence of Potter’s cousin. Four previously unknown drawings of scenes from Melford Hall detail Potter’s understanding of and appreciation for architecture and interior design. The drawings are now on display at Melford Hall as part of an exhibition celebrating Potter’s links to the house.

Beatrix Potter’s drawing of the chamber room at Melford Hall
Credit: © Beatrix Potter/National Trust

January 8, 2016

This week, the librarian of Congress named American cartoonist and author Gene Luen Yang as National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Yang is the first graphic novelist to be so honored. The ambassadorship is awarded every two years to an American children’s author or illustrator. The position is intended to raise “national awareness of the importance of young people’s literature as it relates to lifelong literacy, education, and the development and betterment of the lives of young people.”

American cartoonist and author Gene Luen Yang was named National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature on Jan. 7, 2016. He is the first graphic novelist to be so honored. Credit: © Gene Luen Yang

Yang was born on Aug. 9, 1973, in California, the son of Chinese immigrants, and grew up in the San Jose area. He began drawing and writing comic books in the fifth grade. In 1997, Yang received a grant for his comic Gordon Yamamoto and the King of the Geeks, which was eventually published by a comic book company. Yang completed a bachelor’s degree at the University of California—Berkeley in 1995 and worked as a computer engineer for two years. He then began teaching computer science at a high school in Oakland. Yang earned a master’s degree in education from California State University at East Bay in 2003. His first graphic novel, American Born Chinese (2006), was enormously successful. It won the 2007 Michael L. Printz Award from the American Library Association for best young adult book. It was also the first graphic novel to be named a finalist for the National Book Award. The book includes three stories about struggles with one’s identity, a theme common to many of Yang’s works. Boxers & Saints (2013), a two-volume graphic novel about the Boxer Rebellion, was also a National Book Award finalist. In the fall of 2015, with illustrator Mike Holmes, Yang began writing the “Secret Coders” graphic novel series for middle-graders. The series follows a group of students who use their computer programming skills to solve mysteries. Yang was a high school computer science teacher until 2015, when he became a full-time writer.

The position of national ambassador was established in 2008 under the direction of the librarian of Congress. The award is sponsored by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress; the Children’s Book Council, a publisher’s organization; and Every Child a Reader, an independent foundation. The first national ambassador was Jon Scieszka, who served in 2008 and 2009. He was followed by Katherine Paterson (2010-2011), Walter Dean Myers (2012-2013), and Kate DiCamillo (2014-2015).

Other World Book articles: 

• Literature for children
• Literature for children (2007) – A Back in Time article
• Literature for children (2013) – A Back in Time article

December 3, 2015

In 1862, an English mathematics professor at Oxford University and three little girls went rowing on the River Isis, which flows through the city of Oxford and the university. The professor began to tell a story to the children, a fantasy about a little girl named Alice. Later that year, the professor wrote the story down, calling it “Alice’s Adventures Underground.” He enlarged his tale into a book-length version, which was published on Nov. 26, 1865, and celebrated its 150^th anniversary last week.

Illustration from ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll. Credit: Arthur Rackham (1907); Private Collection (© Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Images)

The professor was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who wrote under the name Lewis Carroll. He titled his completed story Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. For generations, it has been one of the most famous and beloved children’s books in the English language

Alice in Wonderland, as it is commonly called, tells about the adventures of a little girl in a make-believe world under the ground. The character of Alice was inspired by Alice Liddell, the daughter of the dean of Christ Church at Oxford, who joined Carroll rowing on the river with her two sisters. Alice falls asleep in a meadow and dreams she enters a “wonderland” after she falls down a hole while following a nervous and fashionably dressed white rabbit. She soon meets many strange characters, including the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, the Mock Turtle, and the Queen of Hearts. The book’s popularity increased, in part, because of the illustrations created by the English cartoonist and book illustrator Sir John Tenniel.

Carroll described Alice’s further adventures in Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1872). The second book introduced such additional fantasy characters as Humpty Dumpty, the dragonlike Jabberwock, and the silly twins Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

Carroll wrote both books to give pleasure to children, but over the years, adults also have come to enjoy the humor, fantastic characters, word games, puzzles, and absurd moments in the stories. Scholars study the books to find intricate and elevated meanings in what seems to be nonsense. Thus, Carroll composed a literary classic that appeals, on different levels, to both young readers and adults.

May 9, 2012

Maurice Sendak, a popular, influential, and occasionally controversial American illustrator and author of children’s books, died on May 8, 2012, at the age of 83. During a career that covered more than 60 years, Sendak illustrated about 80 books and wrote and illustrated nearly 20 others. His most famous work is the picture book Where the Wild Things Are (1964). Sendak won the 1964 Caldecott Medal for his illustrations for the book, which he also wrote. The story relates how a boy named Max deals with his emotions through the use of his imagination. The book influenced many children’s illustrators to move away from the innocence of children’s books of the time to create more realistic child characters.

Where the Wild Things Are was the first book in a loose trilogy that includes In the Night Kitchen (1970) and Outside Over There (1981). Each story portrays the main character on a voyage to a fantasy world. In The Art of Maurice Sendak (1998), Sendak explained that the three books “are all variations of the same theme: how children master various feelings–anger, boredom, fear, frustration, jealousy–and manage to come to grips with the reality of their lives.” Sendak’s works have aroused some criticism over his exploration of such sensitive topics as sexuality and fierce sibling rivalry. Upon its publication, some critics claimed that the monsters in Where the Wild Things Are were too frightening for children. Several of Sendak’s books are close observations of children at play, including The Sign on Rosie’s Door (1960) and We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy (1993).

In addition to writing and illustrating children’s books, Sendak worked in the theater during the 1980′s and 1990′s. He designed sets for operas and ballets and wrote the lyrics and designed a musical version of Where the Wild Things Are. He also collaborated with singer and songwriter Carole King on the children’s album Really Rosie (1975). In 2003, Sendak and playwright Tony Kushner produced Brundibar (2003), a picture book based on an opera that was performed by children in the early 1940′s, during World War II, in a German concentration camp.

Maurice Bernard Sendak was born on June 10, 1928, in a poor neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. He attended the Art Students’ League from 1949 to 1951, when he began his career as an illustrator of children’s literature.

Additional World Book articles:

• Literature for children
• Literature for children 1964 (a Back in Time article)