For fear of tempting the weather gods, I will not make too big a deal of this and merely say that we will be meeting this Wednesday, May 18th in Joanna's verdant garden for a brown bag get-together to celebrate our final meeting of this 2021-2022 season of the Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson, and to hear Carla's presentation on Margaret Wise Brown. To take advantage of the setting, the weather, and the fact that we will be together IN-PERSON, we will be meeting at NOON.
With that, I wish you all a lovely few days before our meeting. I will not bother you all with the tale that has plagued me lo these past 22 years of my mysteriously disappearing copy of Goodnight Moon...
Until Wednesday, Jacquie
Christine's Minutes
At last. Was the sigh of blessed relief audible across the border in Dobbs? It may well have been, as, thanks to some convergence of the planets, there no leaf blowers, no lawn mowers and no earth movers to be heard as fourteen members of the Literature Club gathered in Joanna’s lovely back yard for an in-person meeting. Additionally, a delicious luncheon was served to surprise our outgoing President, Fran Greenberg, along with our newest and very intrepid member, Sharon DeLevie.
President Connie Stewart thanked Joanna for her lovely venue, and thanked Fran for her exceptional leadership during the past two years of COVID 19, Zoom, and all the attendant uncertainties.
The minutes were read and accepted. The treasury is currently flush with $520.11.
For our final program of the year, what could be better than Carla’s presentation of the biography of Margaret Wise Brown, of whom it could safely be said that while we all know her famous Goodnight Moon, we knew nothing at all of her life and who she was. She proved to be a fascinating character.
Carla, in the persona of the “little old lady whispering hush,” wore an apron, a necklace full of vegetables, and rabbit ears.
The two biographies used in the presentation – in elegant juxtaposition – were Margaret Wise Brown, Awakened by the Moon, published in 1992, by Leonard Marcus, a prominent reviewer of children’s books, and In the Great Green Room, 2016, by Amy Gary, a former Director of Publishing at Lucas Films. Carla described the latter’s approach as being novelistic; additionally, it has a foreword written by James Stillman Rockefeller, Jr, MWB’s fiancé at the time of her sudden death.
Margaret Wise Brown was born in 1910 in then-fashionable Greenpoint, Brooklyn, the middle child of well-off parents, both with illustrious ancestors. Later, the family moved to Beechhurst, and then to Great Neck. Margaret attended both public and private schools, and later a Swiss boarding school. She went to Hollins College, her mother’s alma mater, and encountered her early mentor, Marguerite Hearsy, who encouraged her writing for many years. After college, Margaret moved to Greenwich Village, famously filled with writers and artists. She held various jobs and was also subsidized by her father. But then, hearing good things about Bank Street’s education program, she applied and was accepted as a student teacher. While there, she met William Scott, a publisher she would later work for. Margaret joined the Bank Street Writers Laboratory, a group of writers for children who met, read, and critiqued each other’s work. Had our own Carla only been twenty years older, she would have met Margaret, as Carla was in the writers’ lab in the sixties.
While on a ski trip with friends, Margaret grew tired of hiking up the hills (in those halcyon pre-ski-lift days) and returned to the lodge and wrote The Runaway Bunny. The motif and rhythms are based on a French Provençal ballad, of a woman threatening to leave her lover: a love story, recast as a hunt or quest, involving transformations (perhaps with some credit to Ovid?)
Around that time, Margaret met Michael Strange, the pen name of Blanche Oelrichs, a thrice-married older woman and intellectual. For the next ten years, they would maintain a somewhat tortured relationship.
Having been introduced to Vinalhaven by a friend, in 1942 Margaret bought a Wharf Quarry manager’s house, for the princely sum of $1600, the back taxes owed. There was no electricity and no indoor plumbing. She called it “The Only House.”
Margaret also formed a strong friendship with Ursula Nordstrom, the legendary editor at Harper, publisher of The Runaway Bunny and Goodnight Moon. She continued writing – in her short lifetime she wrote over 100 books. Soon many were published by the new imprint called Golden Books. Life magazine printed a profile of Margaret, along with photos. Have I mentioned that she was quite beautiful? She was also commissioned to write about children’s literature for the Book of Knowledge.
In 1952, while on vacation on Cumberland Island, she met the much younger James Stillman Rockefeller, Jr, nicknamed “Pebble”. They fell madly in love and were soon engaged. But then on a book tour in Nice, France, she went into the hospital after experiencing acute pain, and was operated on for an ovarian cyst and appendicitis. As she was recovering, she kicked up her leg to demonstrate her good health, dislodged a blood clot that quickly traveled to her heart and killed her. She was 42 years old. Dozens of her books are still in print and are translated into many languages.
To end this delightful presentation, members read aloud The Runaway Bunny and Goodnight Moon, sharing the illustrations with all, à la library reading time. I think we were all misty-eyed when the readings came to an end.
Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner, Recording Secretary
President Connie Stewart thanked Joanna for her lovely venue, and thanked Fran for her exceptional leadership during the past two years of COVID 19, Zoom, and all the attendant uncertainties.
The minutes were read and accepted. The treasury is currently flush with $520.11.
For our final program of the year, what could be better than Carla’s presentation of the biography of Margaret Wise Brown, of whom it could safely be said that while we all know her famous Goodnight Moon, we knew nothing at all of her life and who she was. She proved to be a fascinating character.
Carla, in the persona of the “little old lady whispering hush,” wore an apron, a necklace full of vegetables, and rabbit ears.
The two biographies used in the presentation – in elegant juxtaposition – were Margaret Wise Brown, Awakened by the Moon, published in 1992, by Leonard Marcus, a prominent reviewer of children’s books, and In the Great Green Room, 2016, by Amy Gary, a former Director of Publishing at Lucas Films. Carla described the latter’s approach as being novelistic; additionally, it has a foreword written by James Stillman Rockefeller, Jr, MWB’s fiancé at the time of her sudden death.
Margaret Wise Brown was born in 1910 in then-fashionable Greenpoint, Brooklyn, the middle child of well-off parents, both with illustrious ancestors. Later, the family moved to Beechhurst, and then to Great Neck. Margaret attended both public and private schools, and later a Swiss boarding school. She went to Hollins College, her mother’s alma mater, and encountered her early mentor, Marguerite Hearsy, who encouraged her writing for many years. After college, Margaret moved to Greenwich Village, famously filled with writers and artists. She held various jobs and was also subsidized by her father. But then, hearing good things about Bank Street’s education program, she applied and was accepted as a student teacher. While there, she met William Scott, a publisher she would later work for. Margaret joined the Bank Street Writers Laboratory, a group of writers for children who met, read, and critiqued each other’s work. Had our own Carla only been twenty years older, she would have met Margaret, as Carla was in the writers’ lab in the sixties.
While on a ski trip with friends, Margaret grew tired of hiking up the hills (in those halcyon pre-ski-lift days) and returned to the lodge and wrote The Runaway Bunny. The motif and rhythms are based on a French Provençal ballad, of a woman threatening to leave her lover: a love story, recast as a hunt or quest, involving transformations (perhaps with some credit to Ovid?)
Around that time, Margaret met Michael Strange, the pen name of Blanche Oelrichs, a thrice-married older woman and intellectual. For the next ten years, they would maintain a somewhat tortured relationship.
Having been introduced to Vinalhaven by a friend, in 1942 Margaret bought a Wharf Quarry manager’s house, for the princely sum of $1600, the back taxes owed. There was no electricity and no indoor plumbing. She called it “The Only House.”
Margaret also formed a strong friendship with Ursula Nordstrom, the legendary editor at Harper, publisher of The Runaway Bunny and Goodnight Moon. She continued writing – in her short lifetime she wrote over 100 books. Soon many were published by the new imprint called Golden Books. Life magazine printed a profile of Margaret, along with photos. Have I mentioned that she was quite beautiful? She was also commissioned to write about children’s literature for the Book of Knowledge.
In 1952, while on vacation on Cumberland Island, she met the much younger James Stillman Rockefeller, Jr, nicknamed “Pebble”. They fell madly in love and were soon engaged. But then on a book tour in Nice, France, she went into the hospital after experiencing acute pain, and was operated on for an ovarian cyst and appendicitis. As she was recovering, she kicked up her leg to demonstrate her good health, dislodged a blood clot that quickly traveled to her heart and killed her. She was 42 years old. Dozens of her books are still in print and are translated into many languages.
To end this delightful presentation, members read aloud The Runaway Bunny and Goodnight Moon, sharing the illustrations with all, à la library reading time. I think we were all misty-eyed when the readings came to an end.
Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner, Recording Secretary
Carla's presentation in Joanna's garden
