Doyle, Charlotte 1937–

(Charlotte Lackner Doyle)

Personal

Born June 25, 1937, in Vienna, Austria; immigrated to United States, 1939; daughter of George (a restaurant worker) and Mary (a poet and homemaker) Lackner; married Jim Doyle (a playwright), 1959. Education: Temple University, B.A., 1959; University of Michigan, M.A., 1961, Ph.D. (psychology), 1965. Hobbies and other interests: Camping in national and state parks, traveling to new places, reading, watching public television, playing with the computer.

Addresses

Home— Office—Department of Psychology, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY 10708-5999. Agent—Liza Pulitzer Voges, Kirchoff/Wohlberg, 866 United Nation Plaza, New York, NY 10017. E-mail—cdoyle@mail.slc.edu.

Career

Educator and author. Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY, professor of psychology and children's literature beginning 1966.

Member

American Psychological Association (member of executive committee, Division on Psychology and the Arts), Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Awards, Honors

Outstanding Teaching honors from University of Michigan and Sarah Lawrence College.

Writings

FOR CHILDREN

Hello Baby, illustrated by Kees de Kiefte, Random House (New York, NY), 1989.

Freddie's Spaghetti, illustrated by Nicholas Reilly, Random House (New York, NY), 1991.

Where's Bunny's Mommy?, illustrated by Rick Brown, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1995.

You Can't Catch Me, illustrated by Roseanne Litziger, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1997.

Twins!, illustrated by Julia Gordon, Putnam's (New York, NY), 2003.

Supermarket!, illustrated by Nadine Bernard Westcott, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), 2004.

The Bouncing, Dancing, Galloping ABC, Putnam's (New York, NY), 2006.

OTHER

(With W.J. McKeachie) Psychology (textbook), Addison-Wesley (Reading, MA), 1966.

(With W.J. McKeachie) Psychology: The Short Course (textbook), Addison-Wesley (Reading, MA), 1972.

Explorations in Psychology (textbook), Brooks/Cole (Monterey, CA), 1987.

Contributor to American Psychological Association's Encyclopedia of Psychology, and to periodicals, including Creativity Research Journal.

Author's works have been translated into Spanish.

Sidelights

Charlotte Doyle, a professor of psychology and child development at Sarah Lawrence College, is also an author. As an academic, it is expected that she has authored several texts in her field. What is surprising, however, is that she is also a children's book author. Focusing on experiences many children can relate to, Twins! focuses on an ordinary day in the life of two infants and their parents, as they play on a swing, while a toddler makes a fun trip to the grocery store in Supermarket! A Kirkus Reviews writer noted of Supermarket! that "little ones will love this."

Where's Bunny's Mommy?, one of Doyle's first books, is designed to help young children deal with separation from a working parent. Rick Brown's watercolor illustrations bring to life Doyle's story about Little Bunny, who spends a busy day at daycare while Mommy Bunny

takes the bus to her job at a downtown office. Another book geared for younger children, The Bouncing, Dancing, Galloping ABC, reels off a series of action words, each one paired with a brightly colored illustration by Julia Gorton that features a busy red-haired child. Reviewing Where's Bunny's Mommy?, Booklist reviewer Carolyn Phelan called the book "as simple and pleasant an explanation of day care as one could hope for," and a Kirkus Reviews contributor praised The Bouncing, Dancing, Galloping ABC as a "simple but refreshingly rare variation on the traditional alphabet book."

Doyle once told SATA: "I never expected to be writing children's books. I was a college professor, an author of psychology texts and articles, and a researcher into the creative process. Then, one day, I sat down to write a letter to a child, and the letter turned into a children's story. I read it to the children at Sarah Lawrence's Early Childhood Center. The children were so responsive and it was so much fun that I began to hang out there.

"Again and again, being with children has inspired me. I watched some children be loving about having new baby brothers and sisters and others be resentful, and that gave me Hello Baby. A child, so happy to be eating spaghetti that it seemed life couldn't get any better, gave me Freddie's Spaghetti. Watching very young children happy to be in school, but stopping every once in a while to look around, puzzled, and asking ‘Where's Mommy?’ inspired Where's Bunny's Mommy? Seeing the pleasures of chasing and being chased on the playground led to You Can't Catch Me. Being moved by the great love between two parents and their young twins led to Twins! Watching a child dancing, galloping, and bouncing along gave me the idea of an ABC of actions rather than objects, along with a rollicking rhyme in The Bouncing, Dancing, Galloping ABC.

"When I write, I try to enter the world of young children, to see the world as a child does. My greatest pleasure is when children recognize the world created by my books as their world, as giving voice to their fears and hopes and joys, and so say to me, ‘Read it again.’"

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 1, 1995, Carolyn Phelan, review of Where's Bunny's Mommy?, p. 1424; February 15, 2003, Kathy Broderick, review of Twins!, p. 1073; April 1, 2006, Hazel Rochman, review of The Bouncing, Dancing, Galloping ABC, p. 48.

Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2004, review of Supermarket!, p. 627; January 1, 2006, review of The Bouncing, Dancing, Galloping ABC, p. 39.

New York Times, November 4, 1990.

Publishers Weekly, April 20, 1998, review of You Can't Catch Me, p. 68.

School Library Journal, June, 1990, p. 98; July, 1995, Beth Irish, review of Where's Bunny's Mommy?, p. 61; July, 1998, Jacqueline Elsner, review of You Can't Catch Me, p. 73; March, 2003, Joy Fleishhacker, review of Twins!, p. 191.