Millicent Selsam was an American children’s author.

Selsam was born 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...

 May 30, 1912. She became interested in biology

Biology

Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...

 during her high school

High school

High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....

 years. She took this interest to college when she studied biology at Brooklyn College

Brooklyn College

Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, located in Brooklyn, New York, United States.Established in 1930 by the New York City Board of Higher Education, the College had its beginnings as the Downtown Brooklyn branches of Hunter College and the City College of New...

. She was then offered a fellowship teaching at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 while completing an M.A. in botany

Botany

Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...

.

After receiving her M.A., Selsam taught high school science before deciding to write science discovery books for children in 1946. Her first book was From Egg to Chick. After that her work found outlets at Harper & Row, Morrow

HarperCollins

HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...

, Macmillan

Macmillan Publishers

Macmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.-History:...

, Doubleday and Walker

Walker Books

Walker Books is an independent British publisher of children's books, founded in 1978 by Sebastian Walker.The success of their Where's Wally? series enabled them to expand into the American market, starting a sister company called Candlewick Press in 1991.Amelia Edwards, co-founder of Walker Books,...

, among other publishers.

She has written over a hundred children’s books.

Selected works

• Greg's Microscope, illustrated by Arnold Lobel
  Arnold Lobel
  Arnold Stark Lobel was a popular American author of children's books. Among his most popular books are those of the Frog and Toad series, and Mouse Soup, which won the Garden State Children's Book Award from the New Jersey Library Association.Lobel won the 1981 Caldecott Medal for his book...
  
  
• A First Look at Animals With Horns, with Joyce Hunt, illustrated by Harriett Springer
• A First Look at Ducks, Geese, and Swans, with Joyce Hunt, illustrated by Harriett Springer
• A First Look at Bats, with Joyce Hunt, illustrated by Harriett Springer
• A First Look at Animals That Eat Other Animals, with Joyce Hunt, illustrated by Harriett Springer
• A First Look at Dinosaurs, with Joyce Hunt, illustrated by Harriett Springer
• Big Tracks, Little Tracks: Following Animal Prints, illustrated by Marlene Hill Donnelly
• Questions and Answers About Horses, illustrated by Sandy Rabinowitz
• Birth of an Island
• Tony's Birds
• Biography of an Atom, with Jacob Bronowski
  Jacob Bronowski
  Jacob Bronowski was a Polish-Jewish British mathematician, biologist, historian of science, theatre author, poet and inventor...
  
  
• Mushrooms, illustrated by Jerome Wexler
• Egg to Chick, illustrated by Barbara M. Wolff
• Seeds and More Seeds
• How to Be a Nature Detective, illustrated by Ezra Jack Keats
  Ezra Jack Keats
  Ezra Jack Keats , Caldecott-winning author of The Snowy Day, was one of the most important children's literature authors and illustrators of the 20th Century....
  
  
• More Potatoes
• Benny's Animals and How He Put Them in Order
• How Puppies Grow, with photographs by Esther Bubley
  Esther Bubley
  Esther Bubley was an American photographer who specialized in expressive photos of ordinary people in everyday lives.-Biography:...
  
  
• How Kittens Grow, with photographs by Neil Johnson
• Terry and the Caterpillars,illustrated by Arnold Lobel
  Arnold Lobel
  Arnold Stark Lobel was a popular American author of children's books. Among his most popular books are those of the Frog and Toad series, and Mouse Soup, which won the Garden State Children's Book Award from the New Jersey Library Association.Lobel won the 1981 Caldecott Medal for his book...
  
  
• Plenty of Fish
• Sea Monsters of Long Ago
• Stars, Mosquitoes, and Crocodiles : the American Travels of Alexander von Humboldt
• Let's Get Turtles
• Birth of an Island, illustrated by Winifred Lubell
• Big Tracks, Little Tracks: Following Animal Prints, illustrated by Marlene Hill Donnelly
• The 'Don't Throw It, Grow It' Book of Houseplants
• Keep Looking!, with Joyce Huntby, illustrated by Normand Chartier
• Backyard Insects
• All Kinds of Babies, illustrated by Symeon Shimin

External links

• Millicent Ellis Selsam Papers in the de Grummond Collection