Author Joan Bodger Succumbs to Cancer

Joan Bodger, a children's book author, storyteller, educator, and editor, died of cancer, July 4, in Tofino, British Columbia. She was 79.

Bodger wrote five books, including How the Heather Looks (Viking, 1965) and Clever-Lazy (Atheneum, 1979). Her 2000 autobiography, The Crack in the Teacup (McClelland & Stewart), documents an extraordinary life.

Bodger was struck by tragedy in the early 1960s: her seven-year-old daughter died suddenly and her son and first husband became mentally ill. Bodger moved to New York City, where she directed the state's first Head Start program from 1963 to 1965. She went on to teach children's literature at Bank Street Graduate School of Education from 1967 to 1968, and also reviewed books for the New York Times. Bodger became director of children's services at the State Library of Missouri in 1968, but was fired after being branded a "communist pornographer" for publicly supporting an underground newspaper. Her name was cleared by the American Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Committee in 1972. In 1969, legendary publisher Bennett Cerf hired her as a liaison editor of children's books for Pantheon and Knopf.

Bodger remarried and moved to Canada in 1970, where she trained as a Gestalt therapist, incorporating storytelling into her work with abusive mothers. In 1979, she helped found the Storytellers School of Toronto.