In the Great Green Room

Margaret Wise Brown's books have sold millions of copies all over the world, but few people know that she was at the center of a children's book publishing revolution. Her whimsy and imagination fueled a steady stream of stories, songs, and poems, and she was renowned for her prolific writing and business savvy, as well as her beauty and endless thirst for adventure. Margaret started her writing career by helping to shape the curriculum for the Bank Street School for Children, making it her mission to create stories that would rise above traditional fairy tales and allowed girls to see themselves as equals to boys. At the same time, she also experimented endlessly with her own writing. Margaret embraced life with passion, lived extravagantly off of her royalties, went on rabbit hunts, and carried on long and troubled love affairs with both men and women. One of great loves in Margaret's life was a gender-bending poet and ex-wife of John Barrymore who went by the stage name of Michael Strange. She and Margaret had a tempestuous yet secret relationship, at one point living next door to each other. After the dissolution of their relationship and Michael's death, Margaret became engaged to a younger man who also happened to be the son of a Rockefeller and a Carnegie. But before they could marry Margaret died unexpectedly at the age of forty-two, leaving behind a cache of unpublished work and a timeless collection of books that would go on to become classics in children's literature.