Sandra Boynton

Sandra Keith Boynton (born April 3, 1953) is an American humorist, songwriter, director, music producer, children's author, and illustrator.

Boynton has written and illustrated over seventy-five books for children and seven general audience books, as well as over four thousand greeting cards, and five music albums.

She has also designed calendars, wallpaper, bedding, stationery, paper goods, clothing, jewelry, and plush toys for various companies.

The third of the four daughters of Jeanne (Ragsdale) and Robert W. Boynton, Sandra was born in Orange, New Jersey, and grew up in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia.

Her father was a noted progressive educator, scholar (collaborating on textbooks with Shakespearean scholar Maynard Mack), and publisher and co-founder of Boynton/Cook Publishers.

Boynton/Cook Publishers is now owned by Heinemann.

Boynton's parents became Quakers when she was two years old.

She went to Yale University, entering in 1970 in the college's second year of coeducation.

She spent the second semester of her junior year studying in Paris through Wesleyan University's program.

At Yale, she majored in English and also sang sporadically with the Yale Glee Club.

She had joined the Glee Club when additional singers were needed for a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at Carnegie Hall, under the direction of Leopold Stokowski.

Boynton has described herself as "an enthusiastic but undistinguished alto".

Boynton's greeting card designs for Recycled Paper Greetings were at the forefront of the Alternative Cards commercial movement that began in the mid-1970s.

According to RPG co-founder and president Mike Keiser, nearly 500 million copies of Boynton's distinctive humorous cards—featuring an assortment of unnamed cartoon animal characters, spare layout, and droll messages—sold between 1973 and 2003.

At her graduation from Yale in 1974, she received a Special Master's Magna solemnly bestowed by Charles Davis, the Master of Boynton's residential college, Calhoun College.

Unbeknownst to the graduation audience, the honor was actually a fiction.

Boynton's grade point average did not in fact entitle her to any degree honor; but shortly before the ceremony, she had told Professor Davis in mock earnest that "my parents are here, so I'd really appreciate it if you could just mumble some Latin after my name".

Boynton intended to become a theater director.

She attended the University of California, Berkeley for a year for graduate studies in drama, then transferred to the Yale School of Drama D.F.A. program, however she did not complete the program.

The best known of these is a 1975 birthday card bearing images of four animals and the message "Hippo Birdie Two Ewes", a pun playing on the phrase "Happy Birthday to You".

The card has sold over ten million copies to date.

Since the 1977 release of Hippos Go Berserk!, Boynton has published many children's books, as well as several illustrated humor books for the general market.

Her books are most typically for very young children, offered in the laminated paperboard format known as board books.

Nearly all of Boynton's books have been published by either Workman Publishing or Simon & Schuster.

With the birth of her first child in 1979, Boynton postponed indefinitely a career in the theater, judging the demands of that profession not easily compatible with raising a family.

During her undergraduate and graduate years, her teachers included Cleanth Brooks, Harold Bloom, Richard B. Sewall, Maynard Mack, Maurice Sendak, Richard Gilman, Rocco Landesman, David Milch, Stanley Kauffmann, and William Arrowsmith.

Four of her books have been New York Times best sellers: Chocolate: The Consuming Passion (1982); Yay, You! (2001); Consider Love (2002); and Philadelphia Chickens (2002), which reached the number one position on the list, and was on the list for nearly a year.

In May 1995, Boynton wrote and directed a benefit reading, On Stage—featuring Jill Clayburgh, Joe Pacheco, and Jane Curtin—for Sharon Stage in Connecticut.

In 1996, Boynton began writing and producing songs—which she has described as "renegade children's music" — with composer Michael Ford; these songs have been released as albums (Rhinoceros Tap 1996, Philadelphia Chickens 2002, Dog Train 2005, BLUE MOO: 17 Jukebox Hits from Way Back Never 2007, FROG TROUBLE Fall 2013 and Hog Wild in 2017) and also published as book and audio disc sets.

The tracks were recorded, under Boynton's direction and Ford's musical direction, by an eclectic roster of actors and musicians, including Blues Traveler, Meryl Streep, Alison Krauss, Steve Lawrence, and Eydie Gorme, John Ondrasik of Five for Fighting, Kevin Kline, Laura Linney, "Weird Al" Yankovic duetting with Kate Winslet, Patti LuPone, The Bacon Brothers with Mickey Hart, Eric Stoltz, the Spin Doctors, Mark Lanegan, Hootie & the Blowfish, Natasha Richardson, Billy J. Kramer, Scott Bakula, Eric Bazilian and Rob Hyman, The Phenomenauts, Brian Wilson, Neil Sedaka, B.B. King, Sha Na Na, Steve Lawrence, Bobby Vee, Gerry & The Pacemakers, Davy Jones of The Monkees, Dwight Yoakam, Fountains of Wayne, Kacey Musgraves, Ryan Adams, Ben Folds, Brad Paisley, Josh Turner, Darius Rucker, and Linda Eder.

Six Boynton books were on the 2001 Publishers Weekly All-Time Bestselling Children's Books list: Moo, Baa, La La La!, The Going to Bed Book, Barnyard Dance, A to Z, Blue Hat, Green Hat, and Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs!.

More than 85 million copies of her books have been sold.

In an autobiographical talk given at Yale in 2002, "The Curious Misuse of a Yale Education", Boynton refers to her book Grunt (an illuminated book and recording of plainchant in Latin and Pig Latin) as "the culmination of a lifetime spent joyfully squandering an expensive education on producing works of no apparent significance".

Boynton received a 2003 Grammy nomination for Philadelphia Chickens.

In November 2005, and again in November 2007 she presented songs from Philadelphia Chickens, Dog Train, and Blue Moo at the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage, co-hosting in 2007 with Davy Jones of the Monkees.

In November 2006, she directed her son Keith in his own play, The Quotable Assassin, Off-Off-Broadway at Alternate Stages.

She also spent part of her 10th grade year at Ackworth School near Pontefract, England.

Boynton studied Latin for five years in high school, mostly in order to avoid science classes, the scheduling of which invariably conflicted with Latin.

From kindergarten through 12th grade, she and her sisters attended Germantown Friends School, where their father taught English and was Head of the Upper School.

Boynton has frequently cited Germantown Friends' arts-centered curriculum as central to her own "upbeat offbeat" sensibility as well as its thorough integration of the values of pacifism, independent inquiry, and individualism.