From Publishers Weekly Dorothy Kundhardt is well known as the author of the children’s classic Pat the Bunny. This volume， poignantly penned by a dying son about his deceased mother， guides readers through the highs and lows of her life—which included exotic vacations， Depression-era attempts to induce miscarriage， a possible suicide attempt and struggles with tranquilizer addiction. For the most part， the author seamlessly weaves his mother’s story around passages from letters and other bits of correspondence， augmenting it with his own direct recollections. After reading the detailed descriptions of Dorothy’s illustrations， readers will be disappointed that this volume offers only a single photo at the start of each chapter. However， history buffs will enjoy this front row seat to life in the Roaring Twenties and beyond， and writers and illustrators will be intrigued by such an intimate peek at how a successful children’s author worked. "She often had half a dozen projects going at one time. To work on one intensely， then set it aside for another quite different challenge， suited her nature，" Kundhardt writes. Snippets from early correspondence with her publisher and other professionals are a real treat， as are the detailed texts from her beginnings as an author. All in all， this is surprisingly candid look at the professional and personal life of a remarkable children’s author， illustrator， friend， wife and mother.Copyright © Reed Business Information， a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist In My Father's House (1970)， Kunhardt memorialized his father; this year， he creates a mosaic of his mother's life. Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt was a vivid personality and a driven researcher: a Lincoln scholar， like her father， and the writer and illustrator of the groundbreaking and still-in-print picture book Pat the Bunny. What fragments this mosaic--although it lets the tesserae gleam--is Kunhardt's approach. In a great tumble of precise writing， he quotes extensively from the huge collection of letters his mother wrote to her best friend over many decades; he tries to see her both as a son and as a colleague (they collaborated on Twenty Days about the Lincoln assassination); and he attempts to capture her fierce work habits (she took years of notes about her own four children before she wrote Pat the Bunny)， their family dynamics， and the cherished places in New Jersey and New York where they lived. It doesn't always make a complete round， but the broken arcs capture and hold the attention. GraceAnne DeCandidoCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved See all Editorial Reviews