by Moe Zilla

Created on: August 07, 2010

"This is to say
that I was born in a brick city
on a wide street of cobblestones.

The street ran down the hill
to the East River
where boats came in
from all over the world
and blew their whistles
and sailed by."

One year before her death, Margaret Wise Brown wrote a remarkable autobiographical note which appeared in the 1951 edition of The Junior Book of Authors. "It is an unconventional little piece, choosing to emphasize the immediacy of childhood," writes Joan A. Blos, who adapted the note into the text of a 1994 children's picture book. Blos was 66 years old when she realized "this plainly printed note was a picture book waiting to happen," according to an afterword in the book. But she had another reason for creating the book, dedicating it to the memory of Lucy Sprague Mitchell, "Margaret Wise Brown's teacher, and mine."

The book uses hazy, charcoal-and-pastel illustrations to suggest its look into the past. Brown describes the smells and sights she remembers as a child in the 1910s - the tar and wet ropes down by the docks where her father worked as a rope-maker, as well as the brilliant opening of the church's doors, offering "the flash and flicker of gold and candlelight and the mystery of stained glass windows." One of the only other things she remembers about New York City is the sound of horses' hoofs. But there's also that special day when a big open car drives her to the family's new home, under the sweetgum trees on Long Island...

There the 100-year-old memories change to beaches and woods, and even hitching up the local neighborhood dogs so they'd pull her on a sled. She remembers picking cherries from a cherry tree, chasing butterflies, picking up shells, and "watching new flowers come up in the woods as the seasons passed." They're simple memories, but they're real - and they're described by a treasured authors from the world of children's literature. "I think The Days Before Now may fairly be described as vintage Margaret Wise Brown," Blos writes at the end of the book, "a piece fully intended for publication by its author and written where her powers were at their incomparable height."

Brown lists out all the animals she remembers in Long Island, with the same precision that she used to describe all the furniture in "Goodnight, Moon." There's 36 rabbits, plus "two squirrels - one bit me and dropped dead - a collie dog, and two Peruvian guinea hens..." In the book's touching conclusion, she returns to her present - which is 1951 - and shares an honest appraisal of her own life. (She regrets that her name is so long when she's signing autographs, and "I wish I could write a story that would seem absolutely as true as Peter Rabbit and Snow White.") The book ends with a tantalizing last glimpse at her life, where she reveals only that she has a terrier puppy named Crispin and a black cat named Hyacinth, plus a garden in her back yard. "Every summer I go away from my city house with Crispin and Hyacinth for company...

And then she concludes - ironically - that "that is another story."

Learn more about this author, Moe Zilla.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.