How Much Do You Know About “The Runaway Bunny?”

The Runaway Bunny
Written by Margaret Wise Brown & Illustrated by Clement Hurd
Age Level: 0-2 Years
Published 1942

She’s kind of my idol.

How much do you know about The Runaway Bunny and its prolific author, Margaret Wise Brown? 

Best known for Goodnight Moon, Margaret Wise Brown actually wrote more than 100 published and unpublished books. It’s an impressive oeuvre, especially for someone who didn’t even particularly like children. Nonetheless, her work mesmerizes little ones and deeply touches parents, and these facts about Brown’s life will make you adore her books even more. 

- The idea for The Runaway Bunny came to Brown while she was skiing. She ended up writing the entire story - from start to finish - on her ski receipt. 

- In 1946, the year before Goodnight Moon was first published, she famously told a reporter for Life magazine, “I don’t especially like children . . . At least not as a group. I won’t let anybody get away with anything just because he’s little.”

- When she received her first check for writing, she bought an entire cart full of flowers. 

- She had passionate love affairs with both men and at least one woman during her life. 

- The original poem “Goodnight Room” that later became Goodnight Moon was penned while Brown was nursing a breakup. She imagined a girl moving from the country to the city and comforting herself by thinking about her old room. Later, when she went to translate the poem into a book, she imagined the green walls and red and yellow furnishings of a downstairs neighbor’s apartment. 

- Brown never married or had children and she wasn’t remotely bothered by this. In a letter to her college alumni magazine she wrote, “How many children have you? I have 50 books.”

- Brown died at the age of 42 after undergoing routine surgery for appendicitis. Upon discharge, a blood clot that had formed in her leg moved to her heart and ended her life.