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About Robert Munsch

Children’s author Robert Munsch was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He grew up in a family of 9 kids. He almost flunked first grade and also the second, third, fourth, and fifth; but his younger brother was in the grade behind him, and he was a brain and nobody wanted to have Robert be in the same grade as him, so they kept passing him. Robert never learned how to spell, graduated from eighth grade counting on his fingers to do simple addition, and in general was not a resounding academic success.

However—all through elementary school, he wrote poetry. Funny poems, silly poems, all sorts of poems. Nobody thought that was very important, including him. When he went to high school, he didn’t get along with anybody, read lots of books and decided to become a Catholic Priest. He studied for 7 years to be a Jesuit priest, only to find that he was lousy priest material. While studying to be a Jesuit priest, he worked part-time at an orphanage. He knew he liked working with kids and when he left the Jesuits he decided to work in daycare for a year until he figured out what he wanted to do. He went back to school, and it was there that he made up his first story while on a teaching placement at the Wellsley College Child Studies Preschool. He did it for circle time; he didn’t know it was going to become a book called “MORTIMER”.

Back in daycare he discovered he could get the kids to be quiet during nap time by telling them stories. For ten years he did this without thinking he had any special skill. After all, while he made the best stories in the daycare centre, most of the other teachers made better play doh. He eventually got a long list of stories he told, but never wrote them down.

Once when he was out of work, he decided to try to look for work in Canada. The wife of his boss happened to be a children’s librarian who overheard Robert telling stories. She told Robert to publish (who didn’t listen)—so she urged her husband (Robert’s boss) to make him publish! Robert’s boss gave him two months off to do it. So, he had a great two months off…and on the last day, Robert wrote down 10 stories and sent them off to 10 different publishers. Nine said, “No” and one said, “Yes” to a story called “MUD PUDDLE”.

Robert became a writer. MUD PUDDLE sold 3,000 copies the first year.

Finally, he quit his job at the University and started writing and traveling all over Canada while telling stories. Along the way he became Canada’s best selling author, when “LOVE YOU FOREVER” came out in 1986. He had written it as a memorial for two stillborn babies he had in 1979 and 1980. The story started out as a song and he really wanted this story to be a book. He had to change publishers since his regular publisher did not want to do it. Robert was really worried it would not sell—but…it sold 30,000 copies in 1986, 70,000 copies in 1987, one million copies in 1988—and was the bestselling Canadian kid’s book consecutively each of those years!

Robert has kept on writing about two books a year, and now has 54 books published. His latest one is called “PUT ME IN A BOOK”.

You can learn more about Robert Munsch on his website: www.robertmunsch.com