Phyllis Krasilovsky

Phyllis Krasilovsky
Nationality American
Occupation Writer

Phyllis Louise Manning Krasilovsky (August 28, 1926 – February 26, 2014)[1][2] was an American writer of children's books.

Life

Phyllis Louise Manning was born in Brooklyn and graduated from its James Madison High School.[1] She recalled that she started telling children's stories to her then-fiancé William M. Krasilovsky's five-year-old cousin, who was dying of cancer.[3] Kravilovsky was first published after she walked into the Doubleday offices and insisted she must see an editor immediately before the couple left for Alaska. Children’s book editor Margaret Lesser heard the confrontation at the front desk, invited her in, read the manuscript and accepted The Man Who Didn’t Wash His Dishes a few minutes later.[3][4] Krasilovsky’s husband, at the time still a student at Cornell Law School, carefully studied the contract before approving.

Then they headed for Alaska. Their Crossley miniature car was so small, the wheel span was too narrow for the wooden tracks they occasionally encountered on the unpaved Alaska Highway. They had to hitch over the bridges with the car on the back of trucks. Phyllis subsequently used her power of persuasion in the Yukon to get them overnight lodging in a jail when they had nowhere else to stay. They were featured in an article in Ladies' Home Journal, "How America Lives: Newcomers to Alaska".[5][6]

Over the years Krasilovsky published 20 books for children,[3] including The Very Little Girl and Scaredy Cat and perhaps best remembered, The Cow Who Fell in the Canal and Benny’s Flag.[7] She described her The Popular Girls Club as "one of the first books about mean kids."[3] Her books were translated into fourteen languages.[1]

In the late 1960s, Krasilovsky was part of an initiative of eminent children’s book authors who pressed for foreign rights to their works to be negotiated separately from domestic publishing contracts. The first meeting, including Maurice Sendak, Margret Rey and H. A. Rey, Ruth Krauss, Remy Charlip, and Crockett Johnson, was held in her living room in Chappaqua, New York.

Beginning in 1970, Krasilovsky taught children’s literature at Marymount College in Tarrytown, NY, for three years;[3] she was asked to lead the academic procession at graduation despite her lack of a college degree. As a child of the Depression, she had attended James Madison High School in Brooklyn on the commercial track to learn typing and stenography but also joined the debating team, whose medal she won in her graduating year and where she met her future husband.

The Krasilovskys already had four children when the success of her book The Cow Who Fell in the Canal led the Dutch government to reward her with a trip to the Netherlands. When she wrote about it afterwards, it led to a second career as an independent travel writer. She produced articles such as "Yes, It’s Safe to Bring Your Children to Northern Ireland". Another, about traveling to countries such as Haiti with her suitcase packed with her children’s outgrown clothes to distribute there, won a Society of American Travel Writers Foundation award. Eventually she traveled to 147 countries. The Dutch honored her again in 1982 with a reception at the consulate in New York upon the publication of her book The First Tulips in Holland.

In addition to writing for many magazines, she wrote several op-eds for The New York Times and sometimes edited publications.[3]

Krasilovsky was also noted for domestic accomplishments. The New York Times featured her house-swapping country mouse/city mouse family experience with one of her illustrators, Cyndy Szekeres. Another Times article presented how she utilized her freezer in her gourmet cooking.

Her children are Alexis Krasilovsky, now a filmmaker, Jessica, author/illustrator of her own Doubleday children's book, Margaret Brookes and Peter Krasilovsky.

Krasilovsky died at the age of 87 on February 27, 2014, in Redding, Connecticut, of complications from a stroke.[1][8][2]

Books

Notes

  1. ↑ Quoting a catalog record for the 2002 edition, library unknown, OCLC 51611073. Another called it "the true story of Benny" who designed the state flag of Alaska (catalog record for the 1960 edition, library unknown, OCLC 8991673). The Library of Congress assigns to the 2002 edition several "Fiction" subject headings (LCCN 2002-108932). Retrieved 2015-08-16.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Slotnik, Daniel E. (March 1, 2014). "Phyllis Krasilovsky Dies at 87; Wrote Children’s Books". The New York Times.
  2. 1 2 "Phyllis Krasilovsky, 87". Westport Now (Westport, CT). March 1, 2014.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Bradshaw, Kaitlin (January 1, 2012). "Phyllis Krasilovsky: Children’s author talks about her career". The Redding Pilot (Redding, CT).
  4. ↑ "Margaret Lesser Foster Retired Editor Dies". School Library Journal 26 (5): 14. January 1980. (subscription required)
  5. ↑ Disney, Dorothy Cameron (March 1951). "How America Lives: Newcomers to Alaska". Ladies' Home Journal: 179–96.
  6. ↑ Norman, Dawn Crowell (March 1951). "Hair do's and don'ts". Ladies' Home Journal: 188.
  7. ↑ Valainis, Martha. "Birthday Bios: Phyllis Krasilovsky". Children's Literature Network. Retrieved April 4, 2014.
  8. ↑ Quinn, Annalisa (March 3, 2014). "NPR.org Book News: Phyllis Krasilovsky, Author Of 'The Very Little Girl,' Dies". NPR.
  9. ↑ Krasilovsky, Phyllis (1950). The Man Who Didn't Wash His Dishes. Garden City, New York: Doubleday.

External links

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