NY Times: Karla Kuskin, Creator of Witty Children’s Books, Dies at 77
Roar and More, which grew out of Ms. Kuskin’s graduate school project at Yale, was one of the classic books of my childhood. We can still recite many of the poems (“Fish is the wish / Of the cat on the mat / Or maybe his dream / Is catnip and cream”). And then the next page is a drawing of the cat’s reaction (“PRRRRRrrrrrrrr”).
My wife and I read Roar and More to our son when he was young, but he didn’t cotton to it. We were horrified to discover that he thought the Kangaroo noises (“whamp thrimp thrump”) were of the mother kangaroo falling on the joey!
But I’ve never read anything else she wrote. I like some of the work quoted in the NYT obituary, I’ll have to keep an eye out next time I’m in the library.