About the artist:

Marian Foster Curtiss was born in 1909 in Cleveland, Ohio. As a child, she took drawing lessons and often played in her doll house, which was made out of a large piano crate. She studied art at Sophie Newcomb College in New Orleans and Grand Chaumiere in Paris. During the Depression, she worked for the Works Progress Administration drawing old toys and dolls in museums. It was her interest in old toys and dolls that led her to write and illustrate books for children using the dolls as characters in her books. Her illustrations are done in watercolor and gouache using a Chinese ink stick. Illustrating under the pseudonym of Mariana, she illustrated works for others including Janice's (Janice Brustlein) Little Bear series. She died in New York in 1978.