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.

She went by the stage name of Michael Strange and she and Margaret had a tempestuous yet secret relationship, at one point living next door to each other so that they could be together. One was a gender-bending poet and the ex-wife of John Barrymore. Among them were two great loves in Margaret's life.

Margaret would spend days researching subjects, picking daisies, cloud gazing, and observing nature, all in an effort to precisely capture a child's sense of awe and wonder as they discovered the world.Ĭlever, quirky, and incredibly talented, 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. At the same time, she also experimented endlessly with her own writing. 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 equal to boys. Her whimsy and imagination fueled a steady stream of stories, book ideas, songs, and poems and she was renowned for her prolific writing and business savvy, as well as her stunning beauty and endless thirst for adventure. Margaret'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. The extraordinary life of the woman behind the beloved children's classics Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny comes alive in this fascinating biography of Margaret Wise Brown.

In the Great Green Room by Amy Gary