Don Freeman, creator of such popular children's books as Corduroy, Norman the Dorman, Mop Top, and Dandelion, was born in 1908 in Chula Vista, California. After graduating from high school in St. Louis, Missouri, he attended summer art school in San Diego. There he met his future wife, Lydia Cooley. They married in New York in 1932. Don struggled to earn a living playing trumpet in jazz bands. After losing his instrument on the subway one night, he turned to drawing. Soon his sketches of New York City appeared in the Herald Tribune, the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and other publications. He was also an illustrator for William Saroyan and Brooks Atkinson. Before his death in 1978, he wrote and illustrated over thirty children's books, and was the illustrator for over a dozen other titles.
