WHAT BILL PEET READ In his autobiography Bill Peet says: "It was
a wonder I could write much more than my own name after drawing
and daydreaming through English classes in grade school and high
school. I do believe what gave me the language was my love of
books and the hours of reading many of the best authors over the
years, starting with those animal books in the neighborhood
library." "My favorite animal stories were by Ernest Seton-
Thompson, a naturalist who illustrated his own books." Wahb-
Biography of a Grizzly was one of Bill's favorites. Bill
"absorbed the language" in books by James Thurber, O. Henry,
Zane Grey, and the stories of Jack London, Mark Twain, Jules
Verne, Charles Dickens, R. Kipling, and R. L. Stevenson. Some
other influential authors included Sinclair Lewis, H. G. Wells,
John Steinbeck, Thomas Mann, Upton Sinclair, John O'hara, E. B.
White, Erskin Caldwell, George Orwell, Edgar Allen Poe, Victor
Hugo and James Fenimore Cooper. He also read the New Yorker
magazine every week for over 40