Dad's pipe (and the smoking paraphernalia of any other characters) needs to disappear in order for me to consider recommending this book today. Today, not only is smoking on its way to becoming taboo, pipe smoking specifically can bring to mind connections with drug use. When I was a child, my father smoked a pipe and a lot of my friends' fathers smoke pipes.

The first 'problem' I ran into was that Frances' father smokes a pipe. However, re-reading this book in 2011, I cannot say that I would recommend it to children today (unless a couple of changes were made to the story). She's always up to some mischief that her parents patiently tolerate and she learns from her experiences, growing a little more with each one. He also wrote and illustrated seven books on his own, including Baby Farm Animals (Little Golden Books) and The Rabbits’ Wedding (HarperCollins).I loved the Frances books as a child. He collaborated with Margaret Wise Brown on her Little Golden Books titles Home for a Bunny and Little Fur Family, among others, and with Jack Prelutsky on two poetry collections published by Greenwillow: Ride a Purple Pelican and Beneath a Blue Umbrella. He created the character and pictures for the first book in the Frances series by Russell Hoban (HarperCollins) and the first books in the Miss Bianca series by Margery Sharp (Little, Brown). In addition to illustrating works by White and Wilder, he also illustrated George Selden’s The Cricket in Times Square and its sequels (Farrar Straus Giroux). Williams worked as a portrait sculptor, art director, and magazine artist before doing his first book Stuart Little, thus beginning a long and lustrous career illustrating some of the best known children's books. He founded an art school near London and served with the British Red Cross Civilian Defense during World War II. He was born in 1912 in New York City but raised in England.

White, Bedtime for Frances by Russell Hoban, and the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Garth Williams is the renowned illustrator of almost one hundred books for children, including the beloved Stuart Little by E. He also wrote Bedtime for Frances, illustrated by Garth Williams. Russell Hoban was the author of A Bargain for Frances, A Baby Sister for Frances, Best Friends for Frances, A Birthday for Frances, and Bread and Jam for Frances, all illustrated by Lillian Hoban.

Bedtime for frances by russell hoban