PHOTO: Marion Dane Bauer, photographed by Tracy Walsh, continues to inspire readers and writers from her home in Falcon Heights, Minnesota.
Celebrating A Lifetime Of Storytelling And Literary Courage
Award-winning author Marion Dane Bauer reflects on a career devoted to exploring childhood, emotional truth, and curiosity through stories that span generations, genres, and the evolving world of children’s literature.
Marion Dane Bauer has spent a lifetime tracing the emotional contours of childhood with profound sensitivity and a rare clarity of voice. From a small-town upbringing shaped by solitude and introspection, she emerged not only with a deep empathy for the outsider, but with the tools to turn that empathy into story. Her work, whether rendered in lyrical picture books or spare, moving verse, speaks to the heart of growing up—the ache of uncertainty, the wonder of discovery, the power of connection.
Over the course of more than a hundred books, Bauer has embraced the full spectrum of young lives. In On My Honor, she faced grief and guilt with quiet honesty. In Am I Blue?, she dared to break silences that had long harmed vulnerable readers. Her stories are unafraid to ask questions—cosmic, moral, deeply personal—and she answers not with easy lessons, but with openness, grace, and deep trust in the minds of children.
There is something luminous in Bauer’s recent work, a distillation of decades spent listening carefully to the world and to her own voice. Books like We the Curious Ones reflect a writer still in love with the universe and the questions that pull us toward it. She writes, always, with the humility of someone who remembers the child she once was—and the courage to keep speaking on their behalf.
Your recent picture book The Stuff of Stars intertwines cosmic science with lyrical narrative—what inspired you to connect the Big Bang’s grandeur with a child’s birth?
When I was a young girl I spent an afternoon lying on my belly over a boarded windowwell witnessing the birth of a litter of kittens. Ever since, I have seen birth, any birth, whether of kittens, mushrooms, or human infants, as astonishing, even miraculous. Thusthe leap from the Big Bang to the birth of the child holding the book was, for me, simply inevitable.
We, the Curious Ones is one of your latest featured works: how does this book reflect your growth as a storyteller and observer of childhood curiosity?
I began my career more than half a century ago writing novels. I used story, as many children’s writers do, as a way of healing . . . myself and my readers. Living through emotional struggle on the page can bring realresolution. Perhaps I’ve found that resolution because, in recent years, I’ve grown more interested in ideas and in the worldsideas create for us. A child who has been opened to the story of the universe will be open to everything!
Crinkle, Crackle, Crack: It’s Spring! uses sound, rhyme and repetition—how do these poetic tools impact young readers?
Writing, at least the best writing, is musical. Children absorb the sound of language long before they understand individual words. So whatever my topic, I begin with the flow of, the music of the words. And if the words are well-chosen, once a young child takes the sound onboard, the meaning will follow.
In Little Dog, Lost, you chose free verse to tell Mark, Buddy and Mr. LaRue’s story—why?
When I was teaching at Vermont College of Fine Arts, I occasionally said to my MFA students, somewhat archly, I’m afraid, “Poetry novels are usually neither. They aren’t poetry, and they don’t work as novels.” Then came the day I grewimpatient with the short sentences so helpful to beginning readers. That’s when I decided to try writingLittle Dog, Lostin free verse to see if short lines surrounded by white space would keep the reading level accessible even if the sentences grew long. It worked, and I fell in love with the form. (One teacher told me that she and her students had fun counting how long some of my sentences actually were!)
On My Honor remains your most popular novel—how do you feel its exploration of guilt and grief continues to resonate with readers today?
On My Honor is the only one of my novels based on a real incident, one that happened to a childhood friend of mine. But I can’t count the number of times I visited a school in a faraway state to be told that “something just like thathappenedhere.”But it isn’t so much the event, the drowning and the child’s feeling responsible for his friend’s death, that’s universal. It’s that every child is the center of their own universe, which means they tend to feel responsible for everything. Their parents’ divorce. Their friend’s accident. And coming to recognize what we have control over—and what we don’t—takes a lot of learning. All of which means children often carry a load of guilt the adults around them are oblivious to. And though my story was published nearly forty years ago, children’s emotional lives haven’t changed.
As editor of and contributor to Am I Blue?, how did the publication of that book impact you?
I was years into my career before I came to terms with my own sexuality, and when I did, I was told in myriad ways that I couldn’t let it be known in the children’s books world that I was gay, that I would never be published again if I did. (This was the late 1980’s.) But Iknew my silence betrayed, not just myself, but my young audience. It was a time when young people were dying—not metaphorically, actually—for not understandingthat gay people can livehonorable, productive lives. SoI had no choice. And as is obvious now, Am I Blue? didn’t end my career. Looking back now, I believe this collection of gay-themed short stories by some of the most prominent writers of the time has done more good than all the rest of my work combined!
You spent months researching wolves for Runt—how did immersing yourself in wolf behaviourimpact your storytelling voice?
To tell the story I wanted to tell I had to give my wolf characters human language. But the more I learned about the sophisticated and complex ways wolves actually communicate with one another, the less confident I was of my decision—even my right!—to turn them into talking animals. I kept the faith while writing Runt, the story demanded it, but when I revisited my research,intending to write a sequel, I found my respect for the reality of wolves’ livesdisallowed speech. I never wrote the sequel.
As an accomplished author and mentor, what one piece of advice would you offer aspiring authors seeking longevity and authenticity in children’s literature?
Write to explore the heart of the child you carry within you.
