Background
Peggy Rathmann was born on March 4, 1953 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States, and was one of five children.
Peggy Rathmann was born on March 4, 1953 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States, and was one of five children.
Peggy graduated from the University of Minnesota. She also studied commercial art, fine art, and children's book creation in Chicago, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles.
Peggy started her illustrating career in the seventh grade, with campaign posters for her older brother’s successful bid for student council. Rathmann once said that she wanted to teach sign language to gorillas, but after taking a class in signing, she realized what she’d rather do was draw pictures of gorillas. There followed various career plans from commercial artist to fine artist, but meanwhile she continued to work on the picture book she had begun with her nieces, a book that became “endless.”
In school of children’s book-writing and illustration Rathmann began an assignment on an embarrassing incident in her life that led to her first published book. Eventually she decided that this very tendency toward copying was the shameful thing she could use for the assignment she received which eventually turned into the book "Ruby the Copycat." That book was followed by her illustrations of Barbara Bottner's "Bootsie Barker Bites" and by the self-illustrated "Good Night, Gorilla", based on her experiences with gorillas. Since then she has written two more: "Ten Minutes till Bedtime" and "The Day The Babies Crawled Away", which made the Horn Book Fanfare List of best books of 2003.
Peggy Rathmann is married to John Wick.