12 Facts About Ruth Krauss

Ruth Ida Krauss was an American writer of children's books, including The Carrot Seed, and of theatrical poems for adult readers.

Ruth Krauss was born July 25,1901, in Baltimore, Maryland to Julius Leopold and Blanche Krauss.

Ruth Krauss began writing and illustrating her own stories while still a child, hand sewing her pages into books.

Ruth Krauss went to a local high school but left in 1917 after her sophomore year to focus on the study of art.

Ruth Krauss enrolled in the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts.

Ruth Krauss's 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.

Ruth Krauss was considered a gifted but undisciplined musician by her teachers.

Ruth Krauss's father died in late 1921, requiring Ruth Krauss to drop out of school.

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

Ruth Krauss married children's book author Crockett Johnson in 1943.

Two books that Ruth Krauss wrote were runners-up for the prestigious Caldecott Medal, which is awarded to children's book illustrators: The Happy Day and A Very Special House.

Ruth Krauss honored her in the New Yorker cover illustration for Sept 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.