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Leonard S.Marcus Children's Book Historian, Author, Critic |
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Dear Visitor, On this page you will learn how I came to do my work. Each month you'll also find new items of interest: reviews of the latest children's books, excerpts from my recent speeches and talks, thoughts about events in the book world. I hope you'll return often to see what's happening. I have always been a writer. Since college, children's literature is what I have most often written about. I got my start by way of history. In college, I'd become curious about the first years of the American republic, and especially about reports that American children in those days were a lot more free - spirited than their European counterparts. I wondered if this could possibly have been so. And I began to wonder whether the books children read back then - or at any time-somehow shaped or reflected their particular experience of childhood. As I thought about these questions, I also began to pay more attention to the illustrations in the picture books I saw in stores and at the library. I wondered why this often fascinating artwork was almost never exhibited at museums. And as I browsed through more and more children's books I realized that the best ones were written in a wonderfully compressed and animated form of poetry. I wondered why children's books weren't discussed more often as the kind of literature they clearly were. When I first came across Goodnight Moon at a bookstore, I was amazed by the poignant lyricism of Margaret Wise Brown's bedtime book. I had read biographies by the armload as a child and I now decided to write Brown's biography. Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon saw the light of day ten long years later. Telling Brown's story became one of my life's adventures, and led, as one book often does, to the writing of many others. |
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