Marcia Joan Brown is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 children's author and illustrator of more than 30 children's books. She has won the Caldecott Medal

Caldecott Medal

The Caldecott Medal is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children , a division of the American Library Association, to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children published that year. The award was named in honor of nineteenth-century English...

 three times, the only person to do so until David Wiesner

David Wiesner

David Wiesner is an American author and illustrator of children's books and publications. His work has won several honors, including three Caldecott Medals and two Caldecott Honors.-Career:...

 in 2007. She is also the winner of the 1977 Regina Medal

Regina Medal

The Regina Medal is an American Literary award of the Catholic Library Association. It was established in 1959 to recognize "continued, distinguished contribution to children’s literature without regard to the nature of the contribution"....

, a six-time recipient of the Caldecott Honor, and the winner of the 1992 Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal

Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal

The Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal is a prize awarded by the American Library Association to writers or illustrators of children's books published in the United States who have over a period of years made substantial and lasting contributions to children's literature...

. Many of her titles have been produced in other languages, including Afrikaans, German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

, Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 and Xhosa-Bantu

Xhosa language

Xhosa is one of the official languages of South Africa. Xhosa is spoken by approximately 7.9 million people, or about 18% of the South African population. Like most Bantu languages, Xhosa is a tonal language, that is, the same sequence of consonants and vowels can have different meanings when said...

.

Born in Rochester, New York

Rochester, New York

Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...

, she enrolled in the New York State College for Teachers, the University at Albany's predecessor. Marcia taught at Cornwall High School in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, where she began her writing career with the publication of The Little Carousel in 1946.

Growing up during the Depression, Brown considered becoming a doctor. She decided, however, to take up teaching and, later, writing.