RPJ Client Anna Holmes Illuminates Life of “Goodnight Moon” Author Margaret Wise Brown for the New Yorker
On Monday, RPJ client Anna Holmes published The Radical Woman Behind “Goodnight Moon” on the New Yorker, exploring the life and work of Margaret Wise Brown. Her children’s books, including the classic “Goodnight Moon,” rejected the moral instruction of classic fables and folktales, in favor of stories that reflected the preoccupations, pleasures and emotions of young children. Brown herself was an iconoclast. Anna writes:
“Though many of her picture books were populated with cute animals, she wore wolfskin jackets, had a fetish for fur, and hunted rabbits on weekends. Her romances were volatile: she was engaged to two men but never married, and she had a decade-long affair with a woman. At the age of forty-two, she died suddenly, in the South of France, after a clot cut off the blood supply to her brain.”
Anna is a writer, editor and producer and founder of the Jezebel blog. She is currently the Creative Director of Higher Ground Audio, part of the production company founded by President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama.
Read the full essay on the New Yorker here.