Sandra Boynton Books In Order

Publication Order of Little Pookie Books

Publication Order of Children's Books

Sandra Boynton
Sandra Boynton is an American songwriter, music producer, humorist, children’s author, and illustrator. She has written and illustrated over fifty books for both adults and kids, along with more than four thousand greeting cards and five music albums. She has also designed wallpaper, bedding, calendars, paper goods, jewelry, stationery, clothing, and plush toys for different companies.

She was born in Orange, New Jersey on April 3, 1953, and is the third of four daughters of Jeanne and Robert W. Boynton. She grew up in the Mount Airy part of Philadelphia. Her dad was a noted progressive educator, scholar, and co-founder and publisher of Boynton/Cook Publishers.

Her parents became Quakers when she was just two years old. From kindergarten up through twelfth grade, she and her sisters went to Germantown Friends School where their dad taught English and was the Head of the Upper School. She has frequently cited Germantown Friends’ arts-centered curriculum as being central to her upbeat offbeat sensibility as well as its thorough integration of the values of independent inquiry, pacifism, and individualism. She spent part of her tenth grade year at Ackworth School near Pontefract, England.

Sandra studied Latin for five years during high school, in part so she could avoid science classes, the scheduling for which conflicted with Latin.

She attended Yale, going in 1970 during the college’s second year of coeducation. She spent her second semester of junior year studying in Paris through Wesleyan University’s program. While at Yale, she majored in English and sang occasionally with the Yale Glee Club. She joined the Glee Club when some additional singers were required for a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at Carnegie Hall, under Leopold Stokowski’s direction.

The summer after her junior, in 1973, she could not face the prospect of waitressing again, even though she had almost perfected the requisite accommodating manner. Instead, she designed Christmas cards and gift cards, had her Uncle Bill (who was a printer) print them, and she trudged around to various East Coast stores selling them.

During the summer between her college graduation and graduate school in drama at UC Berkeley, she still sold cards, did more designs, and took them to a trade show in New York City. And by the end of that summer, signed on with Recycled Paper Greetings, founded by some Amherst College classmates, named Mike Keiser and Phil Friedman.

Sandra had intended to become a theater director. She went to the University of California, Berkeley for one year for graduate studies in drama, then she transferred to Yale School of Drama DFA program, however she didn’t finish the program. When her first child was born in 1979, she postponed indefinitely a theater career, judging that the demands of that profession weren’t easily compatible with raising a family.

During her undergrad and grad years, her teachers included Harold Bloom, Cleanth Brooks, Richard Gilman, Richard B. Sewell, Maynard Mack, and Stanley Kauffmann.

The greeting card designs that Sandra made for Recycled Paper Greetings were at the forefront of the Alternative Cards commercial movement which began during the mid seventies. Almost five hundred million copies of her distinctive humorous cards, which feature an assortment of unnamed cartoon animal characters, droll messages, and spare layout, sold between 1973 and 2003, according to Mike Keiser RPG’s co-founder and president. The best known of these cards is a birthday card from 1975 which bears images of four animals and a message saying Hippo Birdie Two Ewes, a pun that plays on the phrase Happy Birthday to You. This card has since sold more than ten million copies.

Since “Hippos Go Berserk!” was released in 1977, she has published a number of kids books, along with several illustrated humor books for the general market. Her books are typically for very young kids, offered in a laminated paperboard format called board books.

Four of her books have been New York Times best sellers: Yay, You!, Chocolate: The Consuming Passion, Consider Love, and Philadelphia Chickens, which hit the number one spot on the list and remained on the list for close to a year. Six of Sandra’s books were on Publishers Weekly All Time Bestselling Children’s Book list in 2001: “Moo, Baa, La La La!”, “Barnyard Dance”, “A to Z”, “Blue Hat, Green Hat”, and “The Going to Bed Book”, and “Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs”. Over sixty million copies of her books have been sold.

She was married to Jamie McEwan (an Olympic athlete and writer) from 1978 until 2014, when he died of cancer. Together they have four kids: Caitlin McEwan (an actress and director), Devin McEwan (a whitewater racer and member of the 2001-2016 US Teams), Keith Boynton (a filmmaker and playwright), and Darcy Boynton (a teacher and writer).

Right after she married her husband, they moved to a farm located in the foothills of the Berkshires, and over time they collaborated on four perfect children and two quirky books: The Story of Grump & Pout and The Heart of Cool. They later lived, from 1991 to 1992 in the French Pyrenees so that Jaime could train for the Barcelona Olymics, this time in doubles canoe with Lecky Haller, and came in fourth place.

She has appeared on numerous national radio, television, and newspaper programs. Media such as USA Today, American Profile, The Today Show, NPR’s All Things Considered, The New York Times, CBS Sunday Morning, and The Wall Street Journal.

She got the National Parenting Publications Gold Medal for “Barnyard Dance” and “Your Personal Penguin”, the Irma Simonton Black Award for “Chloe and Maude”, and a Grammy Nomination for “Philadelphia Chickens”.

“Pajama Time” is a children’s book released in the year 2000. A pig on a swing and a jump-roping chicken. An elephant in a fuzzy one piece with feet and a Scottie in plaid pajamas. And in true sing along nuttiness, it is time to head to bed to the beat. Pajammy to the left and pajammy to the right. Jamma jamma jamma jamma P! J! Everyone’s wearing them for dancing tonight. Jamma jamma jamma jamma P! J!