Will I love The Important Thing about Margaret Wise Brown?

I love this subversive, touching, and weird picture book biography about the author of Goodnight, Moon (and more than 100 other books). In 42 pages, Mac has managed to question the whole concept of biography and traditional notions about what children’s books (and all books) should be like—both sentiments reflected in Margaret life and work—while at the same time providing a perfect portrait of the aspects of the author’s life most relevant to her writing, and probing questions of censorship and tastemaking. Among other things, Mac shows young creators how to live in a celebratory manner even if the world… show more.

This book is deceptively simple with its lovely child-friendly language and illustrations featuring rabbits. Yet, the sophisticated questions it poses come right out of graduate programs in literary theory. Is it important to know about an author’s life? How does our knowledge of that life influence how we read an author’s books? Margaret Wise Brown’s life was unconventional, even scandalous, and not necessarily picture book appropriate. But Barnett captures the weirdness, the whimsey, and the beauty.  He invites the child auditor to participate with a plethora of rhetorical questions that will give both children and adults lots to think and… show more.