Her clean yet emotionally affecting manner of addressing the fundamental fears and interests of children has made her one of the best-selling children's writers of the twentieth century, influencing scores of her literary descendents. With over one hundred titles published during her lifetime-over twenty of which are still in print today as well as the recent addition of at least another twenty more volumes culled from her unpublished manuscripts-Brown's pioneering efforts have allowed her to become one of the most revered authors in children's literature. INTRODUCTIONĪ prolific children's writer, Brown revolutionized the picture book industry in the 1930s with the introduction of her simple, poetic verse whose sparse style belied both the inherent power of her message and the strength of her writing. For further information on her life and works, see CLR, Volume 10. The following entry presents an overview of Brown's career through 2004. (Apr.(Also wrote under the pseudonyms Juniper Sage, Timothy Hay, and Golden MacDonald) American author of picture books and poetry for children. (1949), illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen and recently reissued.

The author's fans may want to keep in mind her similarly themed The Color Kittens While the visuals demonstrate considerable polish, the writing is frequently rough ('purple as coal' 'Green as the green/ Of the greenest fern/ Any rabbit has seen'), at least compared with the finely honed works Brown saw into print.

For purple, the mice encounter a dapperly dressed Easter Bunny in the process of painting a large egg that is starting to hatch a single yellow eye, almost as big as the mice's heads, peers through the eggshell's widening crack. Her work offers a panoply of pleasing scenarios. As Krupinski takes on orange, for example, she sets the text within a large orange sun below, the mice paddle a teacup (white, but decorated with an orange motif) in water where fish jump and bumblebees balance on floating oranges that have fallen from nearby trees.

The featured color dominates each extravagantly detailed full-bleed spread. Krupinski (who illustrated the posthumous Brown anthology Mouse of My Heart) treats brief rhymed verses about 11 colors to a series of lavish tableaux, creating a visual story line in which two mice-a painter and his apprentice-travel through a fantasy landscape to discover that the world is a palette of these hues.

My world of color margaret wise brown