James Marshall, We Love You
“Miss Nelson is Missing” & his other picture-books
When James Marshall died in 1992 at the age of fifty, many felt someone special was prematurely subtracted from our lives. In a tribute in the New York Times Book Review, Maurice Sendak lamented the loss of his friend and styled him the last in the line of great picture book artists. In the fall of 2008, Houghton Mifflin republished Marshall’s “George and Martha” stories (some 35 of them) in a single volume, along with remembrances from a number of his friends.
My own memories, I must admit, are tinged with regret because when we first met, I was a foolish young man in my twenties who would not realize until later the riches I was being afforded. In the 1970’s, Marshall was renting a room from Francelia Butler, a professor of mine living in Mansfield Hollow, Connecticut. I got to know him in that way. One time I gave him a lift back to Boston. Another time, we spent a week together in San Diego where, among other things, he deliciously gossiped about his and Sendak’s visit to the home of Dr. Seuss (Ted Geisel).
We finished that rainy drive up to Boston in his apartment on Beacon Hill. There he…
