Marguerite Henry Biography Excerpt

If you haven’t read Marguerite, Misty and Me, the Marguerite Henry biography I spent over two years researching, here is an excerpt for you. I wish you could see her in the movie I found too. 🙂 Pleae enjoy this Marguerite Henry biography excerpt! ~ Susan

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Marguerite Henry was in a movie? How did I miss this when I was a kid devouring her famous horse books? There she was on my laptop screen, a slim senior with a tousled pixie hairdo retrieving a stack of fan letters from her mailbox. Marguerite narrated, “When I was a little girl, I wanted more than anything to have a horse of my very own. As I grew older, grownups said I’d get over my longing for a horse, but I never did.”

I get you, Marguerite. I never grew out of that horse phase either. 

It was 2021 when I viewed the ‌surprisingly action-packed 1980 educational film about her writing process, Story of a Book. Marguerite researched in a library, jotted down notes, plinked keys on her typewriter, drove a Volkswagen van, admired a pinto in a pasture, then spied on her husband Sidney as he read a first draft of her manuscript. If she noticed him looking confused or bored, she knew she had more work to do. 

In the film, Marguerite had pep in her step, great posture and wore neck scarves in every scene. I learned Marguerite worked through at least five different drafts and enjoyed, “revising and polishing a story. It’s like grooming a horse to make it shine.” After her manuscript had enough “grooming,” she would send it off to her publisher. 

A Google search revealed there was no shortage of sources to learn about the award-winning author Marguerite Henry, but I began wondering what her childhood was like. Could I find places and sources to help me create a sketch of a young Marguerite? What was she like as a little girl and teenager? What was her life like as a young woman and aspiring writer? Who was Marguerite Henry before she was famous?

Spoiler alert: I did find young Marguerite Henry, here is her engagement photo.

A Chicago Tribune article revealed that when she was a girl, Marguerite’s family owned a mare named Bonnie. However, things were complicated with the family steed. “I wasn’t allowed anything to do with it. She was Bonnie by name and in appearance, but not in disposition. She had a habit of biting my brother in the breeches and leaving big teeth marks. Besides being a nipper, Bonnie was also a bucker and a bolter.” I speculated whether or not Bonnie had equine gastric ulcers.

Fred, her protective older brother fifteen years her senior, never gave her a ride, nor did he even permit her to touch their horse. That seemed a bit extreme. Despite the fact the horse was a pill, the mare entranced Marguerite. As I found and read documents written by and about Marguerite, I discovered animals had mesmerized her since childhood. In a letter to a school district written when she was ninety-one, Marguerite described playing with her animals when she was a little girl, loving them so much she believed they would grow up and be able to talk. 

Although her childhood animals never really spoke, the stories she wrote gave voice to horses, dogs, cats, foxes and a burro who speak to readers not in small words, in small voices, but in expressions and actions so memorable, the characters remain with us, twenty, thirty, forty, even fifty years after reading their tales. 

I don’t remember at what point I discovered the woman whose heart yearned for horses did not get her first one until she was in her forties, but I admired Marguerite for her tenacity in holding onto a dream and bringing books into the world that were so packed with joy. Both as a writer and a horsewoman, I wanted to grow up to be just like her.

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When I taught sixth grade history, we’d begin each new school year with a shoebox archeology project titled “Who Is This Person?” I would pass out one shoebox containing random items such as a Valentine from the 1990s, an ashtray, an old newspaper clipping, and foreign coins to each table group. With great excitement, students would examine the box contents, list each item and its purpose (the ashtray always baffled them), then create a profile of the mystery person who owned the items. 

Eager to embark on my own, real-life version of “Who Is This Person?”, I visited the Milwaukee County Historical Society. I already knew Louis and Anna Breithaupt welcomed Marguerite Anna, their seventh and final child, into the world April 13, 1902. I was hoping to find an old map or photographs that would shed more light on Marguerite.

Marguerite painted a merry picture of her childhood in Junior Book of Authors. “We lived in a modest little home in Milwaukee and no youngster had a happier period of growing up … Fred, my big brother, used to take my hand and run with me, so that I flew through space in the most astounding manner, like a creature who could glide without wings.”

Marguerite inherited her love for words from her father, a man who recited poetry, Shakespeare and yodeled. Louis was the president and owner of L. Breithaupt Printing Co. On rainy Saturdays, Marguerite joined her father at the print shop. The whirring presses and printed materials captivated her. 

Marguerite’s mother read The Delineator, a journal of fashion featuring serial adventure stories and articles like “Self-Confidence is Easy to Gain with this Home Furniture.” When The Delineator issued a call for children to submit stories, Anna encouraged her youngest to participate since she loved writing tales.

Marguerite wrote “Hide and Seek in Autumn Leaves,” based on a friend’s birthday party. When the children played hide and seek, Marguerite buried herself under a mound of crispy leaves. If it hadn’t been for the birthday girl giving her dog one of Marguerite’s gloves to sniff, Marguerite might have missed out on the cake, as her hiding spot was so stealthy. 

The Breithaupt family rejoiced with news that Marguerite’s story was selected for publication. She received $12 for her work, and in a congratulatory note, the editor suggested Marguerite should use the money to attend summer camp. The budding writer took her editor’s suggestion to heart and registered for church camp on Lake Pistakee in Northern Illinois. I tried valiantly to locate “Hide and Seek in Autumn Leaves,” poring over issue after issue of The Delineator online, pausing to read ads for corsets and Victrolas. I was more successful finding the lake, about an hour from my home.

Marguerite’s Sunday school teacher doubled as camp counselor in charge of the gaggle of girls. One night around a campfire, she asked her charges their favorite hobbies. As Marguerite’s fellow campers told tales of swimming, playing tennis and skiing, Marguerite felt sheepish, realizing all those hobbies were active pursuits. Her hobby was words.

It’s possible Marguerite was not into sports due to recurring bouts of rheumatic fever from the ages ten through twelve. As a result, Marguerite stayed home from school for an extended period. During what could have been a lonely and boring chapter of life, she devoured books. 

However, there was one at least one physical activity Marguerite was good at in her youth: roller skating. In fact, she made it a habit to roller skate every other day to Milwaukee’s North Side Branch Library, a mile away from her home, to check out a new book and return the old one.

Peep the Milwaukee home where Marguerite lived during high school.

One day, as Marguerite roller skated to the library to return Hans Brinker, a motorcycle nearly ran her over. The rider thrust out an arm shoving Marguerite out of the way. She and the book landed askew. Her concern was not for her own scrapes and bruises, but for the precious book. She recalled seeing ominous warnings posted at the library about how defaced books would result in the patron losing library privileges. For a bibliophile, that was an unimaginable fate. 

When Marguerite, sporting a head bandage, made it back to the library with the scraped up book, librarian Miss Delia G. Ovitz led her to a glorious backroom—a book hospital–where she helped Marguerite repair Hans Brinker. “It was all like a doctor’s office, but far more exciting. In this new and magical world I learned my first lesson in book-mending … Every time I tape up a torn page I glow to my job as if I were Mother Teresa saving the human race.”

Marguerite landed her first job, thanks to Miss Ovitz. She became a bookmender. As a fan of Westerns, Marguerite began saving money to buy her own ranch where there would be one stallion for each mare so the horses “would be as prolific as rabbits so that fillies and colts would frisk about everywhere in wild abandon.” That sounded like a worthy goal to me.I wanted to retrace Marguerite’s roller skating route and conferred with the archivist at the Milwaukee County Historical Society. I found the teenage Marguerite with wide eyes and dark bobbed hair in yearbooks. Her senior class picture lists her nickname “Breity.” Was this where she came up with the name for the historical burro in her book Brighty of the Grand Canyon?

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If you love Brighty, Misty of Chincoteague, Dear Readers and Riders and all the other Marguerite Henry books, you MUST read and see my blog post Discovering Wesley Dennis Original Art.

Also, if this Marguerite Henry Biography excerpt gave you all the feels, I think you will also love reading my latest book Marguerite, Misty and Me. I’d be so grateful if you gave it a go. If you purchase Marguerite, Misty and Me here (on my author website), I would love to sign a copy for you! (Please tell all your friends who love the writing of Marguerite Henry too!) THANK YOU!