The following essay is about Maud and Miska Petersham.

Maud and Miska Petersham strove to create picture books that appealed to children. To this end, in their pictures and stories they included the elements they felt children liked: narration, humor, action, and color. Generally, the texts of the books they wrote are simple. They told their stories visually as well as verbally by elaborating on the text pictorially. As Maud Petersham put it in a 1946 article the couple wrote for Horn Book Magazine, "We always try to tell a story in our pictures and often we put a little unimportant story within a story." They felt that every aspect of the book, from draftsmanship--sensitive line, composition, and the use of color in the illustrations--to the actual making of the book--binding, endpapers, layout, and typeface--contributed to the aesthetic education of children. The thirty-nine books they wrote and illustrated, as...