Leave Well Enough Alone (22 page)

She would never be able to tell anyone, of course. Not her mother or even her father. Certainly not Maureen or Reverend Mother. Sister Elizabeth? Sister’s words came back to her: “God bless you, Dorothy, I think you’ll find your way.” Well, maybe someday when I’m old, twenty or thirty, Dorothy decided, I’ll know what she meant by that.

Rosemary Wells (b. 1942) is a bestselling children’s book author and illustrator. Born in New York City, Wells was raised in New Jersey. She grew up in an artistic family; her mother was a ballet dancer and her father was an actor-playwright. “We had a houseful of wonderful books. Reading stories aloud was as much a part of my childhood as the air I breathed,” Wells recalls. “It was also the golden age of childhood, now much changed for my grandchildren.”

Her love of illustrating also began at an early age, and she started drawing at two years old. When she was older, Wells attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She married Thomas Moore Wells in 1963, and the pair lived in Boston for two years while she worked as a book designer for Allyn & Bacon, a textbook publisher. The couple moved to New York in 1965, when Tom entered Columbia University for his graduate degree in architecture, and Wells went to work for the trade publisher Macmillan. Her first book, an illustrated edition of Gilbert and Sullivan’s 
A Song to Sing, O!
, was published in 1968.

Since then, Wells has published more than 120 books, including 7 novels. In her picture books, she pairs her delightful illustrations with humorous, sincere, and psychologically adept themes. She was praised in
Booklist
as having “that rare ability to tell a funny story for very young children with domestic scenes of rising excitement and heartfelt emotion, and with not one word too many.”
Kirkus Reviews
 touted her “unerring ability to hit just the right note to tickle small-fry funny bones.” The
Christian Science Monitor
called her “one of the most gifted picture-book illustrators in the United States.”

Among her bestselling picture book titles are
Voyage to the Bunny Planet
,
Noisy Nora
, and
Read to Your Bunny
. She is best known for the Max and Ruby series, which depicts the adventures of sibling bunnies. Many of her series also feature animal characters, including McDuff (illustrated by Susan Jeffers), Edward Almost Ready, Yoko, and the Mother Goose books edited by Iona Opie. In addition to her picture books, Wells has written several historical fiction and mystery/suspense novels for young adults.

In 2002, the Max and Ruby series was adapted as an animated television series, and has become a popular show for young children. Her picture book
Timothy Goes to School
was adapted for TV in 2000, and several of her other books have been produced as short films. Wells’s work has also been recommended on innumerable lists, including the
New York Times
annual Best Illustrated Books round-up and several American Library Association Notable Book lists. She has won countless awards, such as the Parents’ Choice Foundation Award and multiple School Library Journal Best Book of the Year awards.

In addition to being a prolific writer and illustrator, Wells is a keen advocate of literacy programs. She was a speaker for the national literacy initiative the “Read to Your Bunny” campaign.

Wells has two daughters: Victoria, who is now an editor at Bloomsbury Publishing, and Marguerite, an organic farmer who teaches at Cornell University. She also has five granddaughters: Zoe, Eleanor, Frances, Phoebe, and Petra. The girls are sources of unending fun and inspiration for the never-ending stories that come out of the Wells studio.

Rosemary Wells at age three, in 1945.

Wells, at age four, poses for the camera.

Wells’s parents, James and Helen Warwick, in the early 1950s.

Wells’s father, James Warwick, a Hollywood screen actor, in a pith helmet in
Inside the Lines
, which premiered in 1930.

Wells’s mother, Helen Warwick, a dancer in the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, in 1925.

Wells horseback riding in Nevada in 1958.

Wells (right) and school friend at the US Open in Forest Hills, New York, with tennis star Alex Olmedo after he had just won his match.

Wells, at age twenty, in Boston, Massachusetts.

Wells’s husband, Tom Wells, an architect, in 1965.