Ruth Ida Krauss (July 25, 1901 – July 10, 1993) was an American writer of children's books, including The Carrot Seed, and of theatrical poems for adult readers. Many of her books are still in print. Early life and education Ruth Krauss was born July 25, 1901, in Baltimore, Maryland to Julius Leopold and Blanche Krauss. As a child, Ruth had numerous health problems, including the rare autoimmune disorder pemphigus. She began writing and illustrating her own stories while still a child, hand sewing her pages into books. Ruth went to a local high school but left in 1917 after her sophomore year to focus on the study of art. She enrolled in the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts (now known as the Maryland Institute College of Art). The school's focus on applied arts did not suit her and she left after about a year. Her next stop was a girls camp, Camp Walden in Maine, where she discovered her love for writing; the camp yearbook for 1919 contains her first published piece of writing. After the camp, she spent some time studying violin in the Peabody Institute of Music's preparatory program. She was considered a gifted but undisciplined musician by her teachers. Ruth's father died in late 1921, requiring Ruth to drop out of school. She took a series of office jobs. In 1927, she decided to enroll at the Parsons School of Design in New York. Graduating from Parsons in 1929, as the Great Depression was beginning, she found it difficult to get work as an illustrator. Among the work she did find in this period was the first pictorial book jacket for the Modern Library (Alice in Wonderland, 1932). Ruth was a member of the Writers' Laboratory at the Bank Street College of Education in New York during the 1940s. In the 1930s, Ruth was married to journalist and crime novelist Lionel White; they divorced shortly before World War II. Personal life and career Ruth Krauss married children's book author Crockett Johnson in 1943. They collaborated on many books, among them The Carrot Seed, How to Make an Earthquake, Is This You? and The Happy Egg. Another eight of her books were illustrated by Maurice Sendak, starting with A Hole Is to Dig (1952), which launched Sendak's career. The Krauss-Sendak collaborations spawned a host of imitators of their "unruly" and "rebellious" child protagonists.