Behind every famous children’s book is a real person, and their stories are often as surprising as their characters. Here are five of our favourites, each checked against reliable sources. They make great conversation starters for young readers.

Dr. Seuss and the 50-word bet

After The Cat in the Hat (1957), which used 236 different words, Dr. Seuss’s publisher Bennett Cerf bet him $50 that he couldn’t write a book using just 50 different words. Seuss (real name Theodor Geisel) took the bet. The result, Green Eggs and Ham, was published on August 12, 1960, and uses exactly 50 different words. Seuss later said he found it one of the hardest books he ever wrote. Try it: can your child write a story with only 20 different words? See the Dr. Seuss author page.

Beatrix Potter: publisher and scientist

When at least six publishers turned down The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter paid to print 250 copies herself in December 1901 and gave them to family and friends. Frederick Warne & Co. then published it in colour in 1902, and it became one of the best-selling children’s books ever. Potter was also a serious naturalist who studied fungi: in 1897 her paper on how fungus spores germinate was presented to the Linnean Society of London by a male colleague, because women were not allowed to present there at the time. Read The Tale of Peter Rabbit free.

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Lewis Carroll’s rowing-boat story

Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Dodgson, a mathematics lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford. On July 4, 1862, he rowed up the River Thames with the three young Liddell sisters and made up a story to entertain them. Alice Liddell asked him to write it down. His handwritten version, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, grew into Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, published in 1865. You can even read a facsimile of the original handwritten book.

Roald Dahl, chocolate tester

When Roald Dahl was a pupil at Repton School in England, the chocolate company Cadbury sometimes sent boxes of new chocolate bars for the boys to taste and rate. Dahl later wrote that he dreamed of inventing a chocolate bar that would impress Mr Cadbury himself, a daydream that fed into Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964). Before becoming a writer, Dahl was a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force during World War II. See the Roald Dahl author page.

Louisa May Alcott, Civil War nurse

In 1862, Louisa May Alcott volunteered as a nurse for the Union army in Washington, D.C. Her letters home became her first successful book, Hospital Sketches (1863). A few years later she wrote Little Women (1868–69), based on her own family of four sisters. It brought her lasting fame. More on the Louisa May Alcott author page.

Sources

Some author stories are retold so often that details drift. We’ve kept to the versions supported by museums, libraries and biographers.

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