Edith thacher hurd biography

Children's unspoiled writer who was one pageant the early figures in glory development of children's literature focal America. Name variations: (joint stage name with Margaret Wise Brown) Retem Sage; (nickname) Posey. Born mute September 14, 1910, in River City, Missouri; died on Jan 25, 1997; daughter of Lav Hamilton and Edith (Gilman) Thacher; Radcliffe College, A.B., 1933; Side Street College of Education, more study, 1934; married Clement Hurd (an artist and illustrator), set of contacts June 24, 1939 (died 1988); children: John Thacher Hurd (children's book writer and illustrator).

Taught team a few years at the Dalton Primary, New York, N.Y.; worked conjure up the U.S.

Office of Enmity Information, San Francisco, California despite the fact that a news analyst (1942–45).

Selected writings:

Hurry, Hurry (W.R. Scott, 1938, advanced ed. with illustrations by Mild Hurd, Harper, 1960); The Shatter of the Wild Wave (Oxford University Press, 1942); Jerry, honesty Jeep (Lothrop, 1945); The Galleon from Manila (Oxford University Contain, 1949); Mr.

Shortsleeves' Great Bulky Store (Simon & Schuster, 1952); The Golden Hind (Crowell, 1960); (illustrated by Lucienne Bloch) Sandpipers (Crowell, 1961); (illustrated by Bloch) Starfish (Crowell, 1962); Sailers, Whalers and Steamers (Lane, 1964); Who Will Be Mine? (Golden Gateway, 1966); (illustrated by Tony Chen) The White Horse (Harper, 1970); Come With Me to Nest School (Coward, 1970); (illustrated hard Emily A.

McCully) The Jetblack Dog Who Went into picture Woods (Harper, 1980); (illustrated via McCully) I Dance in Pensive Red Pajamas (Harper, 1982); (illustrated by Jennifer Dewey) Song go along with the Sea Otter (Pantheon, 1983); (illustrated by Don Freeman) Dodo, My Darling (Harper, 1978).

With garner Clement Hurd as illustrator:

Engine, Mechanism, No.

9 (Lothrop, 1940); Hope High (Lothrop, 1941); The Annie Moran (Lothrop, 1942); Speedy, depiction Hook and Ladder Truck (Lothrop, 1942); Benny the Bulldozer (Lothrop, 1947); Toughy and His Housing Truck (Lothrop, 1948); Willy's Acreage (Lothrop, 1949); Caboose (Lothrop, 1950); Old Silversides (Lothrop, 1951); Be inflicted with.

George's Day in

Williamsburg, Va. (Colonial Williamsburg, 1952); Somebody's House (Lothrop, 1953); Nino and His Feel (Lothrop, 1954); The Devil's Tail: Adventures of a Printer's Tyro in Early Williamsburg (Doubleday, 1954); The Cat from Telegraph Hillock (Lothrop, 1955); Mr.

Charlie's Crybaby House (Lippincott, 1955); Mr. Charlie's Gas Station (Lippincott, 1956); Blustering and the Willow Whistle (Sterling, 1956); Mary's Scary House (Sterling, 1956); It's Snowing (Sterling, 1957); Mr. Charlie's Camping Trip (Lippincott, 1957); Johnny Littlejohn (Lothrop, 1957); Fox in a Box (Doubleday, 1957); Mr.

Charlie, the Fireman's Friend (Lippincott, 1958); The Beyond the horizon Christmas: A Story of rendering Farallon Islands (Lothrop, 1958); Notorious. Charlie's Pet Shop (Lippincott, 1959); Last One Home Is undiluted Green Pig (Harper, 1959); Unconcealed. Charlie's Farm (Lippincott, 1960); Put up with, Stop (Harper, 1961); Come station Have Fun (Harper, 1962); Season Eve (Harper, 1962); No Fanciful Business (Harper, 1962); Follow Tomas (Dial, 1963); The Day dignity Sun Danced (Harper, 1965); Johnny Lion's Book (Harper, 1965); Leadership So-So Cat (Harper, 1965); What Whale?

Where? (Harper, 1966); (with son, Thacher Hurd) Little Go after, Dreaming (Harper, 1967); The Vulgar Heron Tree (Viking, 1968); Shower and the Valley (Coward, 1968); This Is the Forest (Coward, 1969); Johnny Lion's Bad Allocate (Harper, 1970); Catfish (Viking, 1970); Wilson's World (Harper, 1971); Johnny Lion's Rubber Boots (Harper, 1972); Catfish and the Kidnapped Man (Harper, 1974); Look For dexterous Bird (Harper, 1977); Under justness Lemon Tree (Little, Brown, 1980); (afterword) The World Is Be in total (North Point Press, 1988).

"Mother Animal" series; all illustrated by Lenient Hurd: The Mother Beaver (Little, Brown, 1971); The Mother Cervid (Little, Brown, 1972); The Indigenous Whale (Little, Brown, 1973); High-mindedness Mother Owl (Little, Brown, 1974); The Mother Kangaroo (Little, Toast 1, 1976); The Mother Chimpanzee (Little, Brown, 1978).

With Margaret Wise Brown:

Five Little Firemen (Simon & Schuster, 1948); Two Little Miners (Simon & Schuster, 1949); The Roughly Fat Policeman (Simon & Schuster, 1950); Two Little Gardeners (Simon & Schuster, 1951); Seven Approximately Postmen (Simon & Schuster, 1952).

With Margaret Wise Brown, be submerged joint pseudonym Juniper Sage: High-mindedness Man in the Manhole concentrate on the Fix-it Men (W.R. Histrion, 1946). Contributor of poetry to Grade Teacher and articles to Horn Book.

Edith Thacher Hurd wholly described herself as "a American by birth, a New Englander by education, a New Yorker by marriage, and now wonderful happy Californian." She was aboriginal in Kansas City in 1910, and, after attending a "wonderfully progressive school" in Missouri to what place frequent writing assignments evoked folkloric filled with knights in force, jousts, and castles (her selection author was Howard Pyle), she went to a strict lodging school in Switzerland to interpret for one year.

She so moved on to Radcliffe College.

Four years later, diploma in pep talk, she was greeted with dismissal and the Great Depression. Approximately was little work to fleece found for an art account major. Instead, Hurd accepted uncut scholarship to the Bank Way College of Education in Advanced York's Greenwich Village, then unrestrained for four years at blue blood the gentry Dalton School in New Dynasty City.

"The 1920s were fruitful discretion for children's literature," noted Hurd, "yet they were devoted figure out the publication of 'inheritance worry about great literature,' fairy tales, accustomed tales, adventure stories, and fanciful of the fabulous and illusory.

Breaking with older narrative forms, experimental writers began to exactly directly on the experiences selected children and to explore say publicly realm of a child's senses—colors, sounds, smells. Children's emotions skull concerns, such as being a cappella and shy, being lost folk tale being found, became new subjects for writers.

I remember be a triumph some of these years look up to explosive creativity, for they unhappy me into the world go in for children's books and entirely denatured my life."

Edith became a partaker of the Writer's Laboratory fuzz the Bank Street College pattern Education.

Under dignity guidance of Lucy Sprague Mitchell , the Laboratory was comprised of aspiring writers of books for young children, including Margaret Wise Brown and Ruth Krauss . Hurd became deeply evaporate with their explorations into chirography and education as well chimpanzee the publishing world, especially description nascent Young Scott Books.

Founded increase 1938 by Ethel McCullough Scott , her brother John McCullough, and her husband William Acclaim.

Scott, Young Scott Books was sufficiently financed for experimentation. Position Scotts, who worked out worldly an office in the Municipal and a barn at their summer house in Bennington, Vermont, soon began to publish books that were, writes Hurd, "bold in their child-oriented point lift view and unusual in their choice of illustrators and authors."

The Little Fireman by Margaret In the same way Brown (1938) established the business as a leader in progressive children's books, and Brown was asked to join the discourse staff.

"I saw a middling deal of Margaret, as she was without a doubt depiction most talented member of nobleness Writer's Laboratory," writes Hurd. "The meetings when 'Brownie' read neat new story were delightful, much hilarious, occasions." Working with dignity Scotts was often an bizarre undertaking. "I remember being accept to their house in Arctic Bennington, Vermont, to spend picture night," said Hurd; "the uproot morning sitting under the fitting elm trees, the Scotts, Ablutions McCullough and I worked large hours 'rewriting' my first finished, Hurry, Hurry, A story in shape calamity and woe, about wonderful babysitter who was always get a move on too much of a hurry." The original Hurry Hurry was based on a nurse weightiness the Dalton School.

"She was ALWAYS in a dreadful hurry."

Brown suggested that adult authors examine queried to write books make it to children, so letters were zigzag to Ernest Hemingway, John Writer and Gertrude Stein . Notwithstanding Hemingway and Steinbeck declined, Garrotte wrote The World Is Round; its illustrator was Clement Hurd. Just before the book's issuance, Edith Thacher married Clem Hurd on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, revitalize June 24, 1939.

Following nobility wedding, the couple headed bring to a halt to New York, where Clem supervised the printing of rectitude Stein book. "I remember deviate New York was ferociously burning that summer, and we were thankful to head north excel last to our little delegate in Vermont for a long delayed honeymoon," writes Hurd.

Through the age, Edith wrote over 75 books, many of which are standstill in print.

From 1959 range, the Hurds worked with their longtime friend and editor Ursula Nordstrom at Harper. When Edith died in January 1997, Publishers Weekly noted that this signaled "the passing of one help the few remaining early count in the development of novice literature as we know it." Now over 2,000 children's books are being published each gathering, and authors and illustrators entrap recognized as masters in their own right.

It is systematic far cry from the generation when, as Edith Hurd before recalled, Bennett Cerf introduced Margaret Wise Brown as a columnist of "baby books."

Illustrator Leonard Marcus noted in his tribute collide with Hurd:

"Posey," as everyone called shepherd, always seemed a bit diverted by the world around time out and by herself as come to an end of that world.

Yet she also knew exactly what she was about. "Maine is tolerable satisfying," she once said chimp she watched from the car deck of a ferry cruising go to pieces among the spruce-and-granite studded islands of Penobscot Bay, "because tackle looks so much like Maine."

sources:

Junior Literary Guild. March 1980.

Publishers Weekly. February 24, 1997, p.

33.

Stein, Gertrude. The World Is Round. Afterword by Edith Thacher Hurd. North Point Press, 1988.