It’s the birthday of one of the best-selling children’s book authors of all time, Margaret Wise Brown (1910-1952), who wrote The Runaway Bunny (1942), Goodnight Moon (1947), and over 100 other books in her very short lifetime.

Brown was born in Brooklyn, New York, to wealthy but emotionally and/or physically absent parents. Her mother was often depressed, and her father traveled for work. Brown, beautiful and impetuous, grew up to be needy in her adult relationships. She graduated from Hollins College in Roanoke, Virginia, in 1932, and eventually took a job editing children’s books in New York City. She started writing herself and by 1941 was writing full time, sometimes under her own name, sometimes under pen names. While earning a reputation as “the laureate of the nursery” for her wildly successful children’s books (Goodnight Moon has sold in the millions), Brown threw parties; engaged in beagling, a sport in which people and hounds run after hares together (please don’t ever make me do this); and had passionate relationships with both men and women, some of whom treated her badly. Two of her most famous relationships were with William Gaston, an alcoholic and womanizer, and Blanche Oelrichs (pen name Michael Strange), who “dismissed Brown’s literary success because she wrote for children” (Karen MacPherson, “The bold, boisterous woman behind the classic children’s tale ‘Goodnight Moon’,” The Washington Post, January 9, 2017). Boo.

In March, 1952, Brown fell in love with James Stillman Rockefeller, Jr., and they planned to marry. But in November of that year, Brown had an emergency appendectomy while in Nice, France. When asked how she was doing afterward, she kicked her leg to show she was better. The action dislodged a blood clot and she died instantly at the age of 42.

Brown’s book Big Red Barn (illustrated by Felicia Bond) begins:

By the big red barn

In the great green field,

There was a pink pig

Who was learning to squeal.

There was a great big horse

And a very little horse.

And on every barn

Is a weather vane, of course—

A golden flying horse.

(Listen to the rest here.)

Read a good book this fine Wednesday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.