Ruth Krauss

Ruth Ida Krauss (July 25, 1901 – July 10, 1993) was an American writer of children's books, including The Carrot Seed, and of theatrical poems for adult readers.^[1] Many of her books are still in print.^[2][3]

Ruth Krauss was born July 25, 1901, in Baltimore, Maryland to Julius Leopold and Blanche Krauss, members of "an upper-crust Jewish family."^[4][5] As a child, Ruth had numerous health problems, including the rare autoimmune disorder pemphigus.^[4] She began writing and illustrating her own stories while still a child, hand sewing her pages into books.^[4]

Ruth went to Western High School, and began studying violin there with Franz Bornschein.^[6] She left in 1917 after her sophomore year to focus on the study of art. She enrolled in the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts (now known as the Maryland Institute College of Art). The school's focus on applied arts did not suit her and she left after about a year.^[4] Her next stop was a girls camp, Camp Walden in Maine, where she discovered her love for writing; the camp yearbook for 1919 contains her first published piece of writing.^[4] After the camp, she studied violin in Peabody Institute of Music's preparatory program. She studied the first two years with her former teacher Bornschein, and a third year under Frank Gittelson. Both considered her a naturally gifted but undisciplined musician.^[4][6]

Ruth's father died in November 1921, requiring Ruth to drop out of school and give up the violin professionally. She took a series of office jobs and lived with her mother and at times with her aunt's family. In 1927, an inheritance from her grandmother allowed her to leave home and follow artistic pursuits. She enrolled at the Parsons School of Design in New York, focusing mostly on costume design.^[7] Classmates during this time included Claire McCardell, and she had a brief relationship with Isamu Noguchi.^[6] Graduating from Parsons in 1929, as the Great Depression was beginning, she found it difficult to get work as an illustrator. Among the work she did find in this period was the first pictorial book jacket for the Modern Library (Alice in Wonderland, 1932).^[4] She was supported during this period by her mother, who continued to run the family furrier business until her remarriage in 1930 to Albert A. Brager, founder of the Brager-Eisenberg department store.

Ruth was a member of the Writers' Laboratory at the Bank Street College of Education in New York during the 1940s.

In 1930, she met and married journalist and crime novelist Lionel White; they divorced shortly before World War II. After her divorce from White, Krauss married the cartoonist and children's book author Crockett Johnson in 1943. They collaborated on many books, among them The Carrot Seed, How to Make an Earthquake, Is This You? and The Happy Egg.^[7]

Another eight of her books were illustrated by Maurice Sendak, starting with A Hole Is to Dig (1952), which launched Sendak's career.^[4][7] The Krauss-Sendak collaborations spawned a host of imitators of their "unruly" and "rebellious" child protagonists.^[8] The peculiar definitional phrasing of Krauss's writing in this book—with sentences like "A party is to make little children happy"—was based on quotes from children in Rowayton School Kindergarten (in Rowayton, Connecticut, where Krauss and Johnson lived) and became something of a cultural phenomenon when the book was first published and has helped to maintain its popularity.^[4]

Krauss also illustrated a few of her own books.^[9] In addition to her books for children, Krauss wrote three collections of poetry and plays in verse for adults.^[7]

Two books that Krauss wrote were runners-up for the prestigious Caldecott Medal, which is awarded to children's book illustrators: The Happy Day (1950) and A Very Special House (1954).^[7]

Maurice Sendak characterized Krauss as a giant in the world of children's literature, saying: "Ruth broke rules and invented new ones, and her respect for the natural ferocity of children bloomed in to poetry that was utterly faithful to what was true in their lives".^[4] He honored her in the New Yorker cover illustration for September 27, 1993, which shows a homeless boy using Krauss's book A Hole Is to Dig as a pillow and another child holding I Can Fly as they sleep.^[4]

• Nel, Philip. Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children's Literature. University of Mississippi Press, 2012.

• Ruth Krauss papers at the University of Connecticut Libraries
• Ruth Krauss at Library of Congress Authorities – with 63 catalog records