In the Great Green Room: The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown

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. Margaret’s books have sold millions of copies all over the world, but few people know that she was at the center of a publishing revolution. Her whimsy and imagination fueled a steady stream of 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. Clever, quirky, and incredibly talented, Margaret embraced life with passion, lived extravagantly off of her royalties, and carried on long and troubled love affairs with both men and women. Among them were two great loves in Margaret’s life: a gender-bending poet and ex-wife of John Barrymore, and a younger man who also happened to be the son of a Rockefeller and a Carnegie that Margaret was engaged to. But before they could marry Margaret died unexpectedly at the age of forty-two, leaving behind a cache of unpublished work and a timeless collection of books that would go on to become classics in children’s literature. In In the Great Green Room, author Amy Gary captures the eccentric and exceptional life of Margaret Wise Brown, revealing an intimate portrait of a creative genius whose unrivaled talent breathed new life into the literary world.