Children’s author Florence Parry Heide died in her sleep 23 October 2011. Born Florence Fisher Parry on 27 February 1919 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, her most famous book may be The Shrinking of Treehorn (1971), which inspired two sequels. In the book, according to her New York Times obituary, the book is “about a boy whose parents paid little heed to him, even as he began getting littler and littler, unable to reach familiar shelves, watching as his clothes seemed to grow on him. Its comic, macabre plotline appealed to the artist Edward Gorey, who illustrated it and two sequels, Treehorn’s Treasure (1981) and Treehorn’s Wish (1984).”
Heide graduated from UCLA in 1939, and then worked in advertising and public relations in New York City. During World War II, she was the publicity director of The Pittsburgh Playhouse. She met and married Army Captain Donald C. Heide in 1943, and together they moved to Kenosha, Wisconsin, after the war. He worked there as a lawyer, while she concentrated on her family.
She began writing in the 1960s, and her first book, Maximilian, was published in 1967. She went on to write more than 100 books, ranging from picture books to YA novels, and several collections of poetry.
She was a large presence in Kenosha, organizing an annual Fourth of July parade, and in 2009 she was honored with Florence Parry Heide Day.
Her husband died in 1992. She is survived by two daughters (with whom she co-wrote several books), two sons, eight grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. Another son died in 2004.