Randall Jackson Jarrell was born on May 6, 1914 in Nashville, Tennessee. After moving to California in hisyouth, Jarrell returned to Nashville to attend high school and college. He attended Vanderbilt University where he earned a bachelor's degree in psychology in 1935 and a master's degree in English in 1939. While at Vanderbilt and later as an instructor at Kenyon College, the University of Texas at Austin, Sarah Lawrence College, and the Women's College of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Jarrell wrote poetry. His first book of poetry, Blood for a Stranger, was published in 1942. His poetic output consisted of nine volumes of poetry, two published posthumously. The Woman at the Washington Zoo received the National Book Award in 1960. Although poetry was Jarrell's major literary form, he also published literary criticism, translations, a novel, and children's fiction.

Jarrell became interested in fiction for young people when...