Mary Ann Hoberman, whose dozens of children’s rhyming books tried to encourage them to read — especially to read aloud — and to memorize poems, died July 7 at her home in Greenwich, Connecticut. She was 92.
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, which published many of her books, announced her death from a prolonged illness that was unspecified.
Mrs. Hoberman wrote poems about animals (“The Llama Who Had No Pajamas” was one of her classics), clothing, friendship, families, picky eaters, and various other topics that interest young people.
“She had a gift for finding the extraordinary in everyday things — buttons and pennies, butter and jelly,” Megan Tingley, president of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, who has worked with her for more than 35 years, said in a statement. . . “She could write a poem about anything.”
Mrs. Hoberman started her career with feet. She had always enjoyed writing light verse, and in her mid-twenties she sent some to a publisher; the result was “All My Shoes Come in Twos”, poems about different types of shoes. It was published in 1957 and was illustrated by her husband, Norman Hoberman, an architect.
“Easy to read and fun to listen to read aloud,” wrote The Fresno Bee of California, “it will appeal to little dress-conscious ladies.”
Three other books, also illustrated by her husband, followed in the next five years, and her career took off, eventually encompassing more than 50 books, with another coming out next year.
Perhaps her most acclaimed book was “A House Is a House for Me” (1978, illustrated by Betty Fraser), which won a National Book Award. The verses were about all kinds of houses, both for living beings and for other things.
Barrels are homes for pickles
And bottles are homes for jam.
A pot is a place for potatoes.
A sandwich is home for some ham.
It ended with a jump from micro to macro:
A flower belongs in a garden.
There is a donkey in a stable at home.
Every creature known has its own house
And the earth is a home for all of us.
One of the adoring critics, Harold CK Rice, wrote in DailyExpertNews Book Review: “With surreal precision and changes of scale and color, animals—large and small, wild and tame—are placed cheek to cheek with children and familiar objects. , and they have all come together with a kind of mad enthusiasm; the book is a manic overflow of images and ideas.”
In addition to books she wrote herself, Ms. Hoberman curated poetry collections for young readers, including “Forget-Me-Nots: Poems to Learn by Heart” (2012, illustrated by Michael Emberley), which collected pieces from a wide variety of poets, including Gwendolyn Brooks, Carl Sandburg, Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Coatsworth. It started with one of her own poems, ‘A Poem for the Reader’, in which she encouraged children to create their own poems:
You choose your favourites
From the ones you’ve read
And invite them to live in
The house in your head.
This house is called Memory,
Everybody knows,
And the more you put into it,
The bigger it gets.
In 2008, when the Poetry Foundation named her “Children’s Poet Laureate,” a title she held until 2011 that made her something of a poetry ambassador for young readers, Ms. Hoberman told The Chicago Tribune how she envisioned the role of poetry.
“I don’t like it when a four-line poem of mine is in a teacher’s manual, and there are three pages on how to use it in the curriculum, and it’s scrutinized,” she said. “That’s not what poetry is for. It’s for the joy.”
Mary Ann Freedman was born on August 12, 1930 in Stamford, Connecticut, and grew up there. Her father, Milton, was a salesman and later a businessman, and her mother, Dora (Miller) Freedman, was a housewife.
“I think I was about 4 years old when I first understood that many of the stories I loved so much were made up by real people, with real names, rather than they had always been here like the moon or the air,” said Mrs. Hoberman said in an interview on her website. “I then decided that when I grew up I would also write stories, which would be printed in books for other people to read.”
In a 2008 interview with the Poetry Foundation, she said moments from her childhood could be found in her books.
“I started writing when I had kids of my own,” she said, “but I wasn’t so much observing them as remembering what it was like to be a kid myself.”
She received a bachelor’s degree from Smith College in 1951 and a master’s degree in English literature from Yale some 35 years later. She and Mr. Hoberman were married in 1951.
One of her most famous other books was “The Seven Silly Eaters” (1997, illustrated by Marla Frazee), about a mother’s struggle to accommodate her children, each of whom will only eat a certain food.
“Hoberman’s riotous tale is spun like a Seussian fable,” wrote Jon Agee in The Times Book Review, “and told, as the doctor would have told it, in an uptempo, whimsical rhyme.”
Mrs. Hoberman also wrote a series of books called “You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You” that were intended to be read aloud by two people, alternating lines or sometimes reading simultaneously.
“Each rhymed short story in this book is like a play for two voices,” she wrote in an author’s note in one of the books, “Very Short Stories to Read Together” (2001). The idea was to encourage not only reading, but also reading aloud.
“I think my poems begin in my feet,” Mrs. Hoberman once said. “Nothing gets me going with a poem like a walk. In some eerie way, the steady rhythm of my step causes new ideas to come up and stick in my head. Sometimes the beat comes with words. Sometimes it’s just a wordless cadence that needs to find its language. But once it manifests, I know that sooner or later the poem will follow.”
Mrs. Hoberman’s husband died in 2015. She is survived by four children, Diane Louie and Perry, Chuck and Meg Hoberman; and six grandchildren.
In announcing her death, Mrs. Hoberman’s publisher said she had written a poem for her own farewell party, held days before her death. It ended with these lines:
As a mother, sister, friend and wife,
I’ve had a super duper life
You are the ones who made it this way
And now it’s time for me to go.
My time has come. The water is wide.
I’ll see you on the other side.