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Author Information
 Walter R. Brooks was born in Rome, New York, on January 9, 1886, and died in Roxbury, New York, on August 17, 1958. He was an only son born into a family of musicians, mayors, bankers and theologians. It's no wonder that Brooks had such a vivid imagination. His family wanted him to become a doctor, but he followed his love for writing and became an author instead.
Brooks attended the University of Rochester. After graduating, he worked for the American Red Cross and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. He became associate editor of Outlook Press in 1928 and was a staff writer for several magazines, including The New Yorker.
Brooks' short stories were published in The Saturday Evening Post, The Atlantic Monthly, and Esquire. Brooks' short story, ED TAKES THE PLEDGE, was the basis for the 1950s television series, Mr. Ed, about a talking horse. His most lasting achievement is the Freddy the Pig series, which began in 1927 with TO AND AGAIN (retitled FREDDY GOES TO FLORIDA). He then wrote twenty-five more books starring Freddy.
Walter Brooks said that the town of Centerboro in his Freddy stories was probably Rome, New York many years ago, or Hamilton, where his grandfather lived. Hamilton is also where Brooks is buried.
Illustrator Information
Illustrator Kurt Wiese was born in Minden, Germany in 1887. He illustrated over 400 books, nineteen of which he also wrote, before his death at the age of 87 on May 27, 1974. Wiese was taken prisoner during World War I in 1914 by the Japanese and interned in an Australian prison camp for 5 years. In 1919, he returned to Germany and worked as a set designer for an English film company. In 1928 his BAMBI illustrations won him international acclaim.
Wiese traveled through Russia and Siberia to the edge of the Gobi Desert and then on to Manchuria, where he lived for 6 years. During that time he learned the Chinese language and calligraphy which he later used to illustrate the book, YOU WANT TO WRITE CHINESE, which teaches how to write Chinese characters. His most famous book was THE STORY OF PING, which was lithographed on stone. Another successful book was THE FIVE CHINESE BROTHERS. Many of his books with Chinese backgrounds were drawn from memories of China.
Wiese later went to Sao Paulo, Brazil, where he lived with his sister and worked as a cartoonist for a Brazilian paper. In 1927 he came to the United States after Collier's Weekly offered him a job. Not long after moving to the United States, he met his wife-to-be, Gertrude Hansen, and they bought a small farm in New Jersey.
Wiese is one of America's most accomplished children's books illustrators, winning Caldecott Honors as well as Newbery Awards and Honors. He had a particular affinity for drawing animals.
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