I learned today that Bill Martin, Jr. passed away last week. Unless you’re a parent (or a kid) the name may be unfamiliar.
Martin wrote more than 300 children’s books, including Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, two of my kids’ preschool favorites.
According to the obit in the Chicago Tribune, Martin had difficulty reading until he came upon a system that worked for him:

A struggling reader until he reached college, Mr. Martin finally learned the skill by memorizing poems by Robert Frost and Walt Whitman that his professor read in class. Once he had learned the verses by heart he could pick out the words on the printed page.
He remembered his own learning experience when he started to write books for preschoolers. His frequent repetition of words and phrases was intended to help them remember new terms.

His books are great, and Chicka Chicka in particular was a great help in my kids’ learning the alphabet. I have a CD of Ray Charles reading the book– somewhere, Bill and Ray are riffing on “A told B and B told C… I’ll meet you at the top of the coconut tree…”