A couple of passings of note, in order of the age at which I encountered their work

Bill Peet
Bill Peet was a children's author and illustrator. He worked for Disney for a while but got fed up and went out on his own. He wrote wonderful picture books which I remember fondly. I checked them out on a regular basis from the Hudson Public Library when I was a kid. here is a brief biography of his, and here is a fairly recent interview with him. (Warning: the interview does contain a few expletives, and it centers almost totally on Peet's work for Disney and not his books...which is what I know him best for)

Some of my favorite books by him were "Cappyboppy" (about a Capybara), "Farewell to Shady Glade" (subtle environmental themes), and "The pinkish purplish bluish egg" (Fantasy - a griffin or dragon was involved as I remember).

There were lots of them. They were good. They made me happy.

Stephen Jay Gould

Gould - well, I don't have the same kind of unmitigated admiration for him as for Bill Peet. He was an evolutionary writer, he wrote some very good essays. He was a good defender of the right of teachers to teach evolution in school. But he could be kind of arrogant - I heard him speak twice and both times came away a little sad. Some of his essays are very long and meandering and it's hard when you have to use them as a resource for a paper because you remember stuff out of them, it's just hard to find where it is...

Still, he wrote some very good essays. I started reading "Rocks of Ages" which were his thoughts on science and religion. I'll have to pick it back up and finish reading it in honor of him.

I have a copy of "Wonderful Life" somewhere that he autographed for me after I heard him speak at the University of Michigan...