Author and illustrator Anna Dewdney passed away on September 3, 2016 after a fifteen-month battle with brain cancer.
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Anna Dewdney, an Englewood native whose bestselling series of Baby Llama books delighted young children for more than a decade, died Saturday at her home in Vermont, according to the Associated Press and other published reports. She was fifty years old. Amid the wild success of the Llama Llama series, she began making appearances at events to advocate for children’s literacy.
Dewdney, a longtime literacy crusader, requested that, in lieu of a funeral, people read to a child instead. In 2013, she published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal where she asserted that reading to children promotes empathy.
“Anna’s fun-loving spirit is reflected in her infectious read-aloud rhymes and she taught us how to reach kids on their level and how to reassure and encourage them… We will miss her so, but consider ourselves so lucky to be her publishing family and her partner in her legacy”, Jen Loja, president of Penguin Young Readers, said in a statement.
Dewdney wrote more than 10 Baby Llama books, and Netflix is producing a “Llama Llama” series due in 2017, according to her obituary. Netflix is now working on a Llama Llama animated series; the episodes will be posted online next year.
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While fans have taken to social media to mourn the death of the author, the silver lining is that Anna’s awesome work will continue to live on. That’s doubly appropriate: The charming picture book deals with a little llama’s separation anxiety on the first day of preschool.
