Edith Thacher Hurd papers

Edith Thacher Hurd was born on September 14, 1910 in Kansas City, Missouri. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1933 and attended the Bank Street College of Education in 1934. As a member of the Writer's Laboratory at Bank Street College, she met a number of other aspiring writers who would become well-known as children's authors, including her future collaborator Margaret Wise Brown. Many of the members of the Writer's Laboratory believed that books for young children should focus on their emotions and concerns and have a "child-oriented point of view." Edith Thacher Hurd shared these beliefs and held that one should write about the "stuff of children's imagination and play." In 1938 she published her first book for children, Hurry, Hurry: A Tale of Calamity and Woe, or, a Lesson in Leisure, later reissued for the I Can Readseries with illustrations by her husband, Clement Hurd, in 1960. During the next decade, Edith Thacher Hurd collaborated with Margaret Wise Brown under the joint pseudonym Juniper Sage, working together on several books which were well-received by children and critics alike. Edith Thacher Hurd also had a long and prolific partnership with her husband. The Hurds produced a number of books between the 1940s and 1980s, many of which dealt with nature and animals, including their Mother Animalseries, as well as a number of picture books. The Hurds also collaborated with their son, the children's author Thacher Hurd, on Little Dog, Dreamingin 1967. Throughout her long career, Edith Thacher Hurd wrote a wide range of books for children that, regardless of topic or theme, sought to appeal to their concerns and imagination. She died on January 25, 1997 in Walnut Creek, California.