Amy Krouse Rosenthal was an American novelist who wrote both adult and children’s novels. She was also a short filmmaker and host of a radio show. With her rather public and successful career, she felt the need to tell her audience about her struggles with ovarian cancer. But how did she go about doing so?
Amy Krouse Rosenthal made her ovarian cancer diagnosis public by writing the “modern love” essay for the New York Times that served as a dating profile for her soon-to-be widower husband. She died ten days after the book was published.
Who is Amy Krouse Rosenthal?
Amy Krouse Rosenthal was born on April 29, 1965, in New York City. She was an adult and children’s book author, a short film director, and a radio show host from the United States.
Her memoir Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, her children’s picture books, and the film project The Beckoning of Lovely are some of her most well-known works. Between the years 2005 and 2017, she published more than 30 children’s books, making her quite a prolific writer.
She is the only author to have three books on the Best Children’s Books for Family Literacy list in the same year. She was also a contributor to WBEZ, a Chicago-based NPR station, and the TED conference. (Source: Who is Amy)
Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s books
Amy Krouse Rosenthal penned works for both adults and children. The New York Times bestselling list included Rosenthal’s works: I Wish You More, Uni the Unicorn, Plant a Kiss, Exclamation Mark, Cookies: Bite-Size Life Lessons, and Duck! Rabbit!
The book Duck! Rabbit! was read at the White House during the 2010 Easter Egg Roll. Rosenthal was chosen as the 2015 author for The Global Read Aloud. It is an eight-week program that encourages classrooms worldwide to interact with one another by reading the same books.
Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life is her alphabetized memoir that was published in 2005. It was named one of Amazon’s top ten memoirs of the decade.
Rosenthal’s follow-up, Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal, was published in August 2016, by Dutton Penguin Random House. It was the first book with an interactive text-messaging component.
She had a keepsake journal line with ten titles in total. Her adult and children’s work included Encyclopedia of Me: My Life from A to Z and The Belly Book: A Nine-Month Journal for You Your Growing Belly.
Rosenthal’s picture book Yes Day! was written by Tom Lichtenheld, and has been adapted as a live-action Netflix Original film and was released in March 2021. (Source: Who is Amy)
Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s Films
Rosenthal created short films using her iPhone or a simple Flip camera. Some of her works invite further interaction from viewers, while others are social experiments, and still, others build on one another to become something entirely new.
17 Things I Made, Today is a Gift, ATM: Always Trust Magic, The Kindness Thought Bubble, The Money Tree, and The Beckoning of Lovely are some of Rosenthal’s entertaining films.
On August 8, 2008, September 9, 2009, October 10, 2010, and November 11, 2011, she held Beckoning of Lovely events at the bean in Chicago’s Millennium Park. (Source: Who is Amy)