Today we have two authors who used pen names to cover their identities, although for two very different reasons.
31. This extremely prolific author covered the fact she had so many books published by using the pen names Golden MacDonald, Juniper Sage, Kaintuck Brown and Timothy Hay. Do you know her real name?
Would you believe Margaret Wise Brown? Before her untimely death at the age to 42, Brown felt she was publishing too many books per year. She created pen names so that people wouldn’t realize she was turning out such a volume of books.
How did she come up with so many books? One of her secrets was that she worked closely with children at the Bank Street Experimental School in New York City. The children told her stories and she shared hers. Who wouldn’t be inspired under those conditions?
Many of Margaret Wise Brown’s books have stood the test of time and are still available today, including the classics Goodnight Moon and Runaway Bunny.
32. The next author was said to have disguised her gender by using the initials P.L. It turns out, however, she was born in Australia under one name and when she moved to England, she assumed another. A wildly popular Disney movie is named for the main character of her children’s books, but she was not at all happy with how it turned out and refused to have Americans associated with any further adaptations. Any ideas who she might be?
The author we know as P.L. Travers, or Pamela Travers, was born Helen Lyndon Goff in Australia. Now do you know her famous character?
Pamela Travers created Mary Poppins!