StreetScenes
2010
Celebrating Alumna Margaret Wise Brown's 100th birthday, May 23, 2010
In the fall of 1935, Margaret Wise Brown enrolled in the two-year course offered by Bank Street's Cooperative School for Student Teachers. It was here that the future renowned author of such children's classics as Goodnight Moon, The Runaway Bunny, and many other titles actually became a children's book writer. Bank Street's teacher training included "Writing for Children," a class taught by founder Lucy Sprague Mitchell, who had provoked a revolution in children's literature with her 1921 Here and Now Story Book. Books for children were central to her philosophy of education, and her classes nurtured many budding writers.
The Bank Street College Archives contain two evaluations of Margaret by Lucy. The first, at six months, notes that she had talent but greatly needed discipline and focus. The second, after a year, states that tremendous progress had been made and sums up: "She may become a real writer."
Another Alumna of the Cooperative School, 103-year-old Evelyn Beyer, had Margaret as a student teacher in her class of five-year-olds. "She really connected with the children as a storyteller--it was very clear that she was going to be a writer, " says Evelyn.
In October 1937, Lucy founded the Bank Street Writers Lab, and peopled it with her most talented students, the star being Margaret. (The Writers Lab continues today, having fostered many prizewinning authors over the years.) Lucy also persuaded William Scott, a wealthy nursery school parent, to start a publishing company with Margaret hired as Editor. Margaret's own writing was increasingly in demand by major outside publishers. Still, Scott had no lack of material with the Writers Lab. Lucy also approached Golden Books, and in 1946 Bank Street writers began to write Little Golden Books. Other book projects rapidly proliferated. By then, Margaret, now a well-known and successful author, had left. The Runaway Bunny had been published in 1942. Goodnight Moon was to come in 1947.
Tragically, Margaret died of an embolism in 1952. During her short life, she published more than 100 books. More than 20 others appeared posthumously.
There is a plaque outside the entrance to Bank Street, on the left side, that reads as follows:
Note: The Bank Street Writers Lab is a supportive workshop that fosters the creation of children's literature that understands and appreciates the language of growing children and their real and imagined worlds, and, most of all, affirms the social and cultural heritage of every child. The Writers Lab is an affiliate of the Bank Street Center for Children's Literature.
To learn more about this writer, see Leonard Marcus' biography, Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon, available in paperback, and also his website www.leonardmarcus.com
