1920-2012 · Danish-born American author of easy-reader children's books, including Little Bear
About Else Holmelund Minarik
Else Holmelund Minarik (1920-2012) was born in Fredericia, Denmark, on September 13, 1920, and came to New York with her family at the age of four. She graduated from Queens College in 1942, worked as a reporter for the Daily Sentinel in Rome, New York, during the Second World War, and then taught first grade on Long Island. Finding too few books that her own daughter and her pupils could read by themselves, she began writing them. Little Bear (1957) was her first book, and she went on to write more than forty, including four further Little Bear books illustrated by Maurice Sendak, the last of them A Kiss for Little Bear (1968). She died in Sunset Beach, North Carolina, on July 12, 2012, at the age of 91.
Little Bear is a book of four short stories about a bear cub and his mother, written for children just learning to read. In "What Will Little Bear Wear?"