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Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Author and Filmmaker, Dies at 51 Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Author and Filmmaker, Dies at 51
(35 minutes later)
Amy Krouse Rosenthal, a children’s books author, filmmaker and speaker, died on Monday, days after The New York Times published her widely read essay for the Modern Love column about wanting to find someone to marry her husband after her death. She was 51. Amy Krouse Rosenthal, a prolific children’s book author, memoirist and public speaker who, dying of cancer, found an extraordinarily large readership this month with a column in The New York Times titled “You May Want to Marry My Husband,” died on Monday at her home in Chicago. She was 51.
Ms. Rosenthal learned she had ovarian cancer in 2015. Her death was confirmed by her literary agent, Amy Rennert. The cause was ovarian cancer, which she learned she had in September 2015, her agent, Amy Rennert, said.
In the essay, published on March 3, Ms. Rosenthal purported to set up a dating profile for her husband, Jason Brian Rosenthal, knowing she did not have long to live. The essay was called “You May Want to Marry My Husband.” Ms. Rosenthal’s bittersweet paean to her spouse of 26 years appeared as a Modern Love column in the online Style section of The Times on March 3 and in the Sunday newspaper section on March 5.
A Chicago native and longtime resident, Ms. Rosenthal produced more than 30 books, including journals, memoirs and the best-selling picture stories “Uni the Unicorn” and “Duck! Rabbit!” She made short films and YouTube videos, gave TED talks and provided radio commentary for NPR. The column has drawn almost four and a half million readers online.
She also raised three children, Justin, Miles and Paris, and had a flair for random acts of kindness, whether hanging dollar bills from a tree or leaving notes on A.T.M.’s. “I want more time with Jason,” she wrote. “I want more time with my children. I want more time sipping martinis at the Green Mill Jazz Club on Thursday nights. But that is not going to happen. I probably have only a few days left being a person on this planet. So why I am doing this?
“I do what feels right to me. If it resonates or plants some seeds, great,” she told Chicago magazine in 2010. “I am wrapping this up on Valentine’s Day,” she continued, “and the most genuine, non-vase-oriented gift I can hope for is that the right person reads this, finds Jason, and another love story begins.”
Besides her husband and children, she is survived by her parents, Ann and Paul Krouse; two sisters, Katie Froelich and Beth Kaufmann; and a brother, Joe Krouse. Her husband said in a statement afterward, “When I read her words for the first time, I was shocked at the beauty, slightly surprised at the incredible prose given her condition and, of course, emotionally ripped apart.”
Ms. Rosenthal was a Tufts University graduate who worked in advertising for several years before she had what she called a “McEpiphany”: She was with her children at McDonald’s when she promised herself that she would leave advertising and become a writer. Since 2005, Ms. Rosenthal had produced 28 spirited children’s picture books and two quirky, poignant memoirs (“Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal,” in 2016, and an alphabetized “Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life,” in 2005); delivered TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) Talks and NPR commentaries; and produced short films and YouTube videos of what she called social experiments, with titles like “ATM: Always Trust Magic,” “The Money Tree” and “The Beckoning of Lovely.”
Ms. Rosenthal more than kept her word; starting in the late 1990s, she published at least a book a year, and sometimes three or four. Ms. Rennert said Ms. Rosenthal had completed seven more picture books before her death, including a collaboration with her daughter, Paris, called “Dear Girl.” “I tend to believe whatever you decide to look for you will find, whatever you beckon will eventually beckon you,” she told one audience.
She experimented with different media and liked to blend the virtual and physical worlds. One of her favorite projects began with a YouTube video, “17 Things I Made,” featuring everything from books she had written to her children to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. At the end of the video, she welcomed fans to join her at Millennium Park in Chicago, on August 8, 2008, at 8:08 p.m. The goal was to make a “cool” 18th thing. She beckoned her readers and viewers. In a video called “17 Things I Made” — among them were her books and even a peanut butter and jelly sandwich — she welcomed fans to join her at Millennium Park in Chicago, on Aug. 8, 2008, at 8:08 p.m., to make an 18th thing. Hundreds showed up.
Hundreds turned out to “make” things — a grand entrance, a new friend, a splash, something pretty. “Amy ran at life full speed and heart first,” Maria Modugno, her editor at Random House, said in a phone interview. “Her writing was who she was.”
“I tend to believe whatever you decide to look for you will find, whatever you beckon will eventually beckon you,” she said during a 2012 TED talk. After nine years of writing ad copy for Foote, Cone & Belding (now FCB), Ms. Rosenthal was on maternity leave with her two toddler sons and infant daughter at a McDonald’s restaurant when she experienced what she called a “McEpiphany,” deciding to become an author.
Her books were equally untraditional. “Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal,” published in 2016, is divided into chapters named for school subjects, from “Geography” to “Language Arts.” Subtitled “Not Exactly a Memoir,” the book features lists, illustrations, charts, emails and text messages. In a section called “Midterm Essay,” Ms. Rosenthal reflected on middle age and her passion for life. What she described as her plastic fork in the road led to countless dead ends, however, until she published “Little Pea,” about a pod denied his favorite dessert (spinach) until he finished all his candy (which he detested). The book received favorable reviews, and her course was set.
“If it is wonderful, splendid, remarkable — a view outside a window, a lit-up fountain at night, that fig-chorizo appetizer — I am compelled to seek some sort of saturation point, to listen/stare/savor on a loop, to greedily keep at it until I’ve absorbed, absconded with, and drained it of all its magic,” she wrote. “For all I know, she may suffer torment upon torment in front of a blank screen, but the results read as if they were a pleasure to write,” Bruce Handy said of her work in The New York Times Book Review in 2009. “Her books radiate fun the way tulips radiate spring: They are elegant and spirit-lifting.”
“Invariably, I will have to move on before I have had enough. My first word was ‘more.’ It may very well be my last.” Amy Renee Krouse was born on April 29, 1965, in Chicago to Paul Krouse and the former Ann Wolk, both publishers. Both survive her.
Besides her husband and parents, she is survived by her sons, Justin and Miles; her daughter, Paris; her sisters, Katie Froelich and Beth Kaufmann; and her brother, Joe Krouse.
“I was simply born with a fondness for letters and language and predisposed to enjoy playing around with them and it,” Ms. Rosenthal wrote in a memoir.
She began writing ad copy right after graduating from Tufts University in 1987. Ms. Rennert, her agent, said Ms. Rosenthal had completed seven more picture books before her death, including a collaboration with her daughter called “Dear Girl.”
But even before her diagnosis, she suggested that her energy and imagination were not boundless. Her favorite line from literature, she once said, was in Thornton Wilder’s play “Our Town,” as spoken by the character Emily as she bids the world goodbye: “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?”
When she reached 40, Ms. Rosenthal began calculating how many days she had left until she turned 80.
“How many more times, then, do I get to look at a tree?” she asked. “Let’s just say it’s 12,395. Absolutely, that’s a lot, but it’s not infinite, and I’m thinking anything less than infinite is too small a number and not satisfactory.
“At the very least, I want to look at trees a million more times. Is that too much to ask?”