Margaret Wise Brown, "laureate of the nursery," "writer of songs and nonsense," the author of more than ninety picture books of which fully a dozen or more are acknowledged classics, observed that to write for the young one must love "not children, but what children love." One must know how, that is, to see the world as a child sees it, as though "for the first time" and as an emotional realm no less difficult--and unlikely, on occasion--than one's own.

A synthesizer by nature, a collector of stray cats and dogs, as a writer for young children Brown adventurously merged elements of the folk story-teller, the Romantic lyric poet, and the modernist experimenter with unconventional narrative forms, the childlike comic mask, and the role of the knowing parent-comforter. Intensely dedicated, ambitious, a festive protean innovator, she was among the first concerned with the picture book for the nursery-aged...