In the Great Green Room

If you don't recognize the phrase In the great green room, it's likely that you haven't raised kids or put kids to bed in the past 40 or 50 years. Goodnight Moon, Margaret Wise Brown's most famous book, was a staple in my house, something that was read multiple times nearly every night when my eldest was a toddler and regularly, although not quite as often, when my other kids were toddlers. Back then, I had the whole book memorized. It was a great book for making the transition from daytime to night.

In November, I read a novel called Goodnight June by Sarah Jio. It was a fictionalized account of what inspired Brown to write Goodnight Moon. After reading Goodnight June, I did a little research on Margaret Wise Brown and learned that her latest biography was the one I'm writing about today, In the Great Green Room:The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown by Amy Gary.

I was on the fence about Goodnight June and likewise, I'm on the fence with In the Great Green Room. Not that the short life of Brown isn't interesting. It most certainly is as she did live both a brilliant and bold life.

Brown was born into a family of privilege to parents who didn't really like each other. Those two things probably set her on a path for a lifestyle outside the norms of the day.

(What I didn't understand - and have come across this in other books mostly covering the same time period - when we're told Margaret had limited means, she's still buying multiple houses, renting places to live and/or write, doing all sorts of traveling, employing a valet, among other things. To me that just doesn't jive with being of limited means.)

Brown was a very prolific children's writer. She wrote for several publishing companies, including Golden which probably had the widest distribution network at the time or maybe even ever for children's literature. I was particularly interested in the huge role Brown had in the development of children's literature as we know it today. Towards the end of her life, she had tie-ins to movies and music. (Plus who knew that Rube Goldberg was a great writer of music? Not me. To me he was a simple machines science guy.) She designed novelty books. Are you familiar with Pat the Bunny?

Gary, with a history in publishing, years after Brown's death reach out to Brown's sister, Roberta, since she wanted to republish 4 of Brown's earlier books. In a matter of fact way, not expecting much of a response, Gary asked Roberta if she knew if Margaret had left behind any unpublished works. Roberta brought down a trunk for Gary to look thru and that started 25 years of Gary researching the live and works of Margaret Wise Brown. In the Great Green Room is the culmination of those 25 years' work.

The book goes into great detail about Brown's involvement in the development of texts for children. Not only her literature and the literature of others that grew out of work. But her early work with Bank Street which evolved into creation of textbooks for children based on what children like and how they would best understand material. I loved reading about Margaret's work with her illustrators as I've always found the connection between authors and illustrators really interesting. I was also interested in her interactions with the publishers regarding payment, contracts, royalties, commitments, although a little less detail and a little less repetition of some of the details would have been fine with me.

The book also goes into great detail about Brown's love life. Overall, it was fascinating. She made quite a few poor choices along the way. But some of the minutiae of her romantic affairs got tiresome.

The biography was a quick read, but I think I would have enjoyed it more had there been fewer details where they weren't needed and an inclusion of direct results of Gary's research (quotes from diaries, letters and interviews) rather than just being straight narrative.

Margaret wanted to be remembered as a "writer of songs and nonsense," which until I read that about her, I would have had no clue. She always felt like she was somehow "less" because she wrote for children. I can understand that since children's literature wasn't really a thing back in the 30s and 40s when she was writing away. Eventually she came to appreciate her talents and skills and she seemed happiest at the time of her death. How often does that happen?

Upon finishing the book, I did want to rush back to my computer and pound out a few picture books of my own. (I have one completed draft of a middle grade picture book about the Spanish American War that I worked on with my daughter.) Instead, for now, I'll stick to blogging.