It’s the birthday of Ludwig Bemelmans (1898-1962), author of six children’s books about a schoolgirl named Madeline, which have sold over 13 million copies. Each of the books begins, “In an old house in Paris / that was covered with vines / lived twelve little girls in two straight lines.” Madeline is the smallest but most fearless.

Bemelmans was born in Meran, Austria-Hungary, now Italy, to a Belgian father and German mother; his first language was French, his second German, although John Bemelmans Marciano, Bemelmans’ grandson, claimed that his grandfather didn’t truly have a first language at all. His mother moved him to Germany when he was five because his father had taken off with the governess, and he later worked for an uncle at a hotel in Austria, doing terribly, and was finally sent to New York City in 1914. There he worked at the Ritz-Carlton for 15 years. He didn’t start publishing children’s books until 1934, and Madeline didn’t come out until 1939.

Bemelmans was a world traveler, and Madeline was inspired by his time in a hospital on the Ile d’Yeu after his bike had a run-in with a car. The sisters in the hospital wore headpieces like that of Miss Clavel, and his room was next door to a little girl who’d had her appendix out. In his room, “a crack on the ceiling had the habit / of sometimes looking like a rabbit.” Bemelmans also used details from his mother’s childhood stories of growing up in a convent school. Marciano claims that the book is highly autobiographical: Bemelmans was always the littlest as a child, always felt like an outsider, and was always getting into trouble.

Marciano, who has carried on his grandfather’s legacy by writing more Madeline books with mixed success, has clarified a few details about Madeline: Madeline is not in an orphanage but a boarding school; Miss Clavel is not a nun; and Madeline, though in Paris, is not French. (I totally believed Miss Clavel was a nun. It’s going to take me some time to heal.)

Madeline was a Caldecott Honor Book, and another in the series, Madeline’s Rescue, won the Caldecott Medal and was also named a New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year. Bemelmans also wrote a number of other children’s books and adult books and produced oil paintings as well as watercolors. He died in New York of pancreatic cancer at the age of 64.

Have a fearless Friday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.