{"id":39841,"date":"2026-11-15T16:32:57","date_gmt":"2026-11-15T11:32:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pni.net.pk\/us\/?p=39841"},"modified":"2026-11-15T16:32:57","modified_gmt":"2026-11-15T11:32:57","slug":"good-night-gorilla-author-and-illustrator-dies-at-73","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pni.net.pk\/us\/good-night-gorilla-author-and-illustrator-dies-at-73\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Good Night, Gorilla\u2019 Author and Illustrator, Dies at 73"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p><strong>Peggy Rathmann, \u2018Good Night, Gorilla\u2019 Author and Illustrator, Dies at 73<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Peggy Rathmann, the children\u2019s author and illustrator whose mischievous animals and playful picture books made bedtime an adventure for generations of readers, has died. She was 73.<\/p>\n<p>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 <em>Good Night, Gorilla<\/em> and <em>Officer Buckle and Gloria<\/em>, which earned her the 1996 Caldecott Medal.<\/p>\n<p>Published in 1994, <em>Good Night, Gorilla<\/em> follows a resourceful gorilla who takes a zookeeper\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>She brought a similar sense of comic timing to <em>Officer Buckle and Gloria<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Her interest in making children\u2019s 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, <em>Ruby the Copycat<\/em>, published in 1991.<\/p>\n<p>Rathmann\u2019s other work included illustrations for Bottner\u2019s <em>Bootsie Barker Bites<\/em>, along with her own <em>Ten Minutes Till Bedtime<\/em> and <em>The Day the Babies Crawled Away<\/em>. The latter, published in 2003, was her final children\u2019s book.<\/p>\n<p>Colleagues remembered an artist whose personal warmth matched the humor in her work.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeggy Rathmann could bring a smile to absolutely anyone\u2019s face,\u201d Susan Kochan, senior executive editor at G. P. Putnam\u2019s Sons Books for Young Readers, said in the publisher\u2019s remembrance.<\/p>\n<p>Penguin Young Readers president Jen Loja also paid tribute to the lasting place Rathmann\u2019s stories hold in family life, describing books repeatedly shared at bedtime and cherished beyond childhood. According to the publisher, 15 million copies of Rathmann\u2019s books are in print.<\/p>\n<p>Rathmann lived and worked on a ranch in Northern California. She is survived by her husband, John Wick.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Peggy Rathmann, \u2018Good Night, Gorilla\u2019 Author and Illustrator, Dies at 73 Peggy Rathmann, the children\u2019s 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39842,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-memorial"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>\u2018Good Night, Gorilla\u2019 Author and Illustrator, Dies at 73<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Peggy Rathmann, \u2018Good Night, Gorilla\u2019 Author and Illustrator, Dies at 73 Peggy Rathmann, the children\u2019s author and illustrator whose mischievous animals\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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