Anna Dewdney, children's books author . By William Grimes New York
Times . NEW YORK - Anna Dewdney, whose "Llama Llama" read-aloud picture
books amused and comforted millions of preschool children, died
Saturday at her home in Lower Bartonsville, Vt. She was 50. The cause
was brain cancer, her sister, the anthropologist T.M. Luhrmann, said.
Ms. Dewdney, whom the children's-book journal The Horn Book once called
a "rock star to preschoolers," introduced her most famous character in
"Llama Llama Red Pajama. Published in 2005, it told the rhyming story
of a baby-boy llama upset when his mother delays bringing a nighttime
glass of water. Mama eventually turns up, and the crisis is averted.
Baby llama learns Mama will always be nearby. Parents and children
loved the book. "Dewdney gives a wonderfully fresh twist to a familiar
nighttime ritual," Booklist wrote. Booksellers loved it, too. The title
flew off the shelves, as did its nearly 20 successors, which sold more
than 10 million copies. Netflix plans to offer an animated version of
the books next year. Anna Elizabeth Luhrmann was born on Dec. 25, 1965,
and grew up in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Her father, George, was a
psychiatrist; her mother, the former Winifred Bruce, wrote books for
young readers. Ms. Dewdney attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass.,
and the Putney School in Vermont before earning a bachelor's degree in
art from Wellesley College in 1987. She was a mail carrier, a waitress,
and a boarding school teacher before landing the assignment to
illustrate "The Peppermint Race," by Dian Curtis Regan. Ms. Dewdney
illustrated several more books before discovering her llama. She told
The Star-Ledger of Newark in 2013 that the idea had come from car trips
with her two daughters in the back seat; she made animal sounds to them
as they passed farms. "I would say, 'Look, there are cows,' " she said.
"And I would moo and make sheep noises and chicken noises. Our vet had
a field with donkeys, and then she got a llama. And I would go
'llama-llama-llama.' Written in rhymes, each book starts with a simple
life problem and proceeds to solve it, with lessons learned along the
way. After writing and illustrating "Grumpy Gloria," about a bulldog
jealous of a doll, Ms. Dewdney reeled off a string of best-selling
"Llama Llama" books, including "Llama Llama and the Bully Goat. Ms.
Dewdney also wrote the non-llama books "Roly Poly Pangolin," "Nobunny's
Perfect," and "Nelly Gnu and Daddy Too. Her most recent one, published
last year, is "Llama Llama Gram and Grandpa," in which Llama forgets
his toys on an overnight trip. "I think children are far more like
animals than they are like adults," Ms. Dewdney told The Horn Book in
2013. She added: "Small children are 'unadulterated' beings. They
experience and recognize feelings in themselves and others much like
animals do, without all that other stuff on top. Ms. Dewdney also wrote
the non-llama books "Roly Poly Pangolin," "Nobunny's Perfect," and
"Nelly Gnu and Daddy Too. Ms. Dewdney's marriage, to John Ronald
Dewdney, ended in divorce. In addition to her sister Tanya Marie, she
leaves her parents; another sister, Alice Laughlin; her companion, Reed
Duncan; and two daughters, Berol and Cordelia Dewdney. She recently
completed "Little Excavator," to be published in June by Viking
Children's Books. "A good children's book can be read by an adult to a
child, and experienced genuinely by both," Ms. Dewdney told The
Star-Ledger. "A good children's book is like a performance. I don't
feel my world really exists until an adult has read it to a child.
