Something I like to do while lying next to my son as he falls asleep is go on Wikipedia deep dives about his favorite children’s book authors. Good Lord! Classic children’s book authors are some of the most bananas people that have ever lived!
Margaret Wise Brown was a bisexual international glamour queen who died doing a can can kick! (It dislodged a blood clot.)
Sandra Boynton is a genius Yale grad, married to one (deceased) Olympian and the mother of another, who studied with some of the greatest literary theorists of the past century and remixed Ravel’s “Bolero” entirely for kazoo!
Yes, @AlanLevinovitz, Shel Silverstein literally lived at the Playboy Mansion!
@AlanLevinovitz Ha, @eve_ettinger, that was actually my next one - Arnold Lobel’s marriage, coming out, and early death give new depths of loneliness and longing to the Frog and Toad books! And oh my God, his wife Anita Lobel is somehow even more badass and epic!
@AlanLevinovitz @eve_ettinger (Anita Lobel: Holocaust survivor who spent years separated from her parents and fleeing the Nazis with her nanny)
@AlanLevinovitz @eve_ettinger Also shout out to Beverly Cleary for still not being dead! She turns 103 in April!
