But after reading my Goodreads friend Michael Fitzgerald’s review, it seems that Sneakers, the Seaside Cat is in fact an abridged version of a Margaret Wise Brown short story titled Sneakers Finds the Sea and which was included in a 1955 anthology featuring stories about a cat called Sneakers and with the rather mundane book title of Sneakers: Seven Stories About a Cat Named Sneakers (still published posthumously of course, but much earlier than the Margaret Wise Brown picture books that have been published decades after her death and sometimes still are being published even now). When I noticed the publication date of 1985 for Sneakers, the Seaside Cat, I at first thought that this is yet another picture book published decades after Margaret Wise Brown’s early death in 1952 (and gleaned from manuscripts that were found amongst her papers). Margaret saw herself as something else - a writer of songs and nonsense. They say she was a creative genius who made a room come to life with her excitement. Margaret died after surgery for a bursting appendix while in France. The puppies had licked all the paint off the paper. When he woke up, the papers he painted on were bare. The illustrator painted many pictures one day and then fell asleep. One time she gave two puppies to someone who was going to draw a book with that kind of dog. She also taught illustrators to draw the way a child saw things. She tried to write the way children wanted to hear a story, which often isn't the same way an adult would tell a story. She said she dreamed stories and then had to write them down in the morning before she forgot them. There are many scraps of paper where she quickly wrote down a story idea or a poem. She thought this made children think harder when they are reading. Sometimes she would put a hard word into the story or poem. She liked to write books that had a rhythm to them.

Most of her books have animals as characters in the story.

Even though she died nearly 70 years ago, her books still sell very well. Margaret Wise Brown wrote hundreds of books and stories during her life, but she is best known for Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny.

The Dead Bird by Margaret Wise Brown