Fantastic list from Carrie McBride and the NYPL! As an adult, one of the great thrills of finishing a book is hopping on google to search for the author, and learn a bit about their life through a quick glance at their wiki page, reading a magazine profile, or on the rare occasion – locating a documentary or book to dive even deeper into the details. As a child, I don’t remember that same impulse being present (it’s possible the technology was also just not, really there? Do we just google everything now? Hard to know for sure). Either way, as a parent, I now have the chance to revisit some children’s books I loved growing up and share them with my own kids. This time, I will take the time to learn more about the authors of these books and I’ll be using the NYPL list as my guide – starting with The Story of Charlotte’s Web: E. B. White’s Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic by Michael Sims.
Children’s book authors create some of our first imaginary worlds and we may forget that they live in the real world and have their own stories of struggle, survival, adventure, loss, and success. These memoirs, autobiographies, and biographies of famous authors—who penned beloved picture books, bestselling series, compelling teen novels, and more (not to mention creating some of literature’s most memorable young characters)—take you behind the pages and into their interesting lives and careers.