Peggy Rathmann, ‘Good Night, Gorilla’ Author and Illustrator, Dies at 73
Peggy Rathmann, the children’s author and illustrator whose mischievous animals and playful picture books made bedtime an adventure for generations of readers, has died. She was 73.
Rathmann died on November 3, 2026, Penguin Random House announced on November 10. The publisher did not disclose a cause of death. She was best known for Good Night, Gorilla and Officer Buckle and Gloria, which earned her the 1996 Caldecott Medal.
Published in 1994, Good Night, Gorilla follows a resourceful gorilla who takes a zookeeper’s keys and releases the other animals. As the keeper finishes his evening rounds, his charges quietly follow him home. With little text, Rathmann lets young readers discover the unfolding mischief through her pictures.
She brought a similar sense of comic timing to Officer Buckle and Gloria, published in 1995. The story pairs a police officer delivering school safety talks with a dog whose antics behind his back transform the presentations into a hit. The book won the Caldecott Medal the following year.
Born on March 4, 1953, in St. Paul, Minnesota, Rathmann developed an interest in drawing as a child. Her route into publishing, however, took several turns. After earning a psychology degree from the University of Minnesota, she pursued premedical studies before deciding to develop her artistic talents.
Her interest in making children’s books grew while entertaining her young nieces with drawings during a car journey. An early manuscript met with rejection, but she continued studying and enrolled in a course taught by author Barbara Bottner in Los Angeles. A classroom assignment became her debut picture book, Ruby the Copycat, published in 1991.
Rathmann’s other work included illustrations for Bottner’s Bootsie Barker Bites, along with her own Ten Minutes Till Bedtime and The Day the Babies Crawled Away. The latter, published in 2003, was her final children’s book.
Colleagues remembered an artist whose personal warmth matched the humor in her work.
“Peggy Rathmann could bring a smile to absolutely anyone’s face,” Susan Kochan, senior executive editor at G. P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, said in the publisher’s remembrance.
Penguin Young Readers president Jen Loja also paid tribute to the lasting place Rathmann’s stories hold in family life, describing books repeatedly shared at bedtime and cherished beyond childhood. According to the publisher, 15 million copies of Rathmann’s books are in print.
Rathmann lived and worked on a ranch in Northern California. She is survived by her husband, John Wick.
