Peggy Rathmann, author of the beloved children's book Good Night, Gorilla, has passed away.
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Penguin Random House announced the Nov. 3 death of the 73-year-old children's author earlier this week. The publisher didn't reveal the cause of Rathman's passing.
A St. Paul, Minnesota, native, she began her journey as a children's author while studying commercial art at the American Academy in Chicago. Later in the 1980s, Rathmann took fine art courses at Atelier Lack in Minneapolis.
However, Rathman's path to becoming a children's author wasn't a straight one.
She first graduated from the University of Minnesota with a B.A. in psychology and had plans to enroll in a pre-med program at Macalester College in St. Paul. She found herself more interested in medical illustrations rather than the coursework itself, leading her to embark into the art world.
Eventually, she went on to get swept up into the format of children's picture books.
"There's a funny thing that happens between words and pictures," she explained about the format in a 1995 interview with Publishers Weekly. "A picture book is a special medium. Because the pictures don't work without the words, and the words don't work without the pictures. Pictures enable me to make a better story than I could with words alone."
Years of rejections from publishers eventually led Rathman to take a course at Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles, taught by children's book author Barbara Bottner. The class led to the creation of Rathman's first published book, Ruby the Copycat (1991).
Peggy Rathmann Sold Over 15 Million Copies of Her Beloved Children's Books
From there, she produced a string of successful children's books. She published Bootsie Barker Bites in 1992, followed by Good Night, Gorilla (1994), Officer Buckle and Gloria (1995), and Ten Minutes Till Bedtime (1998), all with Putnam Publishing. Her last children's book, The Day the Babies Crawled Away, came out in 2003.
Her books went on to sell over 15 million copies, and Officer Buckle and Gloria earned her a Caldecott Medal in 1996. Also in 1996, she married her longtime husband, John Wick. After Rathman retired from writing children's books, she worked with her husband on a ranch in Northern California.
Rathman's mentor, Barbara Bottner, paid tribute to the late author in the wake of her passing.
"You don't always know when a genius waltzes through your classroom doors, but it didn't take long for all of us at Otis Parson's to recognize hers," Bottner wrote in the Nov. 9 post, per PEOPLE. "She had 'chops.' But it wasn't long before she found her illustration style, full of wit, economy, comedy, and easy drama."
