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In this study, the engaging art created by children’s author Margaret Wise Brown receives the critical attention it deserves as a lasting contribution to American children’s literature. Through analysis of her dozens of titles published during the height of western Modernism, this scholarly text shares Brown’s importance and impact from the perspective of Brown’s work, rather than biographically. Moving beyond such popular titles as Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny into deeper cuts reveals how Brown’s oeuvre bridges multiple disciplines, including writing, visual art, philosophy, and music. Her projects successfully experiment with artistic collaboration and synesthesia as a natural expression for a child readership while both contributing to and reflecting high Modernism amidst the two World Wars. The quality of Brown’s writing and the maturity of her themes reveal respect for her child audience and recommend her work to the generations of readers who followed her early death. As this book demonstrates, Margaret Wise Brown remains one of the truly great authors of children’s literature.

In this study, the engaging art created by children's author Margaret Wise Brown receives the critical attention it deserves as a lasting contribution to American children's literature. Through analysis of her dozens of titles published during the height of western Modernism, this scholarly text shares Brown's importance and impact from the perspective of Brown's work, rather than biographically. Moving beyond such popular titles as Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny into deeper cuts reveals how Brown's oeuvre bridges multiple disciplines, including writing, visual art, philosophy, and music. Her projects successfully experiment with artistic collaboration and synesthesia as a natural expression for a child readership while both contributing to and reflecting high Modernism amidst the two World Wars. The quality of Brown's writing and the maturity of her themes reveal respect for her child audience and recommend her work to the generations of readers who followed her early death. As this book demonstrates, Margaret Wise Brown remains one of the truly great authors of children's literature.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the National Book Award–winning author of Three Junes: Seventy-year-old Percy Darling is settling happily into retirement—reading novels, watching old movies, and swimming naked in his pond. But his routines are disrupted when he is persuaded to let a locally beloved preschool take over his barn. As Percy sees his rural refuge overrun by children, parents, and teachers, he must reexamine the solitary life he has made in the three decades since the sudden death of his wife. With equal parts affection and humor, Julia Glass spins a captivating tale about a man who can no longer remain aloof from his community, his two grown daughters, or—to his great shock—the precarious joy of falling in love.

There were many Melvin Days, but the term Artist encompasses all of them. During a career spanning seven decades, he produced some of the most intellectually astute, yet often visceral, paintings in New Zealand art history. Born in Hamilton in 1923, Day was a radical but also a great believer in tradition. In recent years, his early Cubist-inclined paintings have reinstated him as a key figure in mid-20th century New Zealand art. In London during the 1960s, he was a vital and talented figure in an expatriate scene. By later that decade he had become the most highly-qualified art historian in New Zealand and had returned home to spend a turbulent, but creatively rich, decade as director of the National Art Gallery.

Love Valentine’s or hate it, we have a story for everyone.

When a doctor from a local free clinic disappears, Episcopal priest Clare Fergusson and police chief Russ van Alstyne pursue an investigation with links to the jazz age, prohibition, and the Great Depression.