A bird can fly.
So can I.
A cow can moo.
I can, too.

So begins the simple, delightful rhyme by Ruth Krauss that both celebrates and encourages a child's imagination. Mary Blair's vibrant artwork, found in the Golden Books archives and newly scanned, looks as fresh as it did 50 years ago.

"A bird can fly.
So can I.
A cow can moo. So begins the simple, delightful rhyme by Ruth Krauss that both celebrates and encourages a child''s imagination. Mary Blair''s vibrant artwork, found in the Golden Books archives and newly scanned, looks as fresh as it did 50 years ago.

Ruth Krauss was born on July 25, 1901 in Baltimore, Maryland. As a child, she enjoyed reading, writing, and drawing, and her parents allowed her to quit school after the eighth grade to study art and the violin. Eventually she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Parsons School of Fine and Applied Art and studied anthropology at Columbia University. In 1941, she married David Johnson Leisk, who wrote and illustrated children's books as Crockett Johnson. They occasionally worked together. In the 1940's, Krauss was a member of the experimental Writer's Laboratory at the Bank Street School in New York City. She is credited as being one of the first author's to use the words and ideas of children in her works. The Carrot Seed and I Can Fly won Spring Book Festival honor citations. Later in life, Krauss wrote adult poetry, which included theatrical poems, many of which were performed in New York, New Haven, and Boston. She died on July 10, 1993 in Westport, Connecticut.