When Dementia Steals the Imagination of a Children’s Book Writer

Last year, Katie Engelhart won the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing for “The Mother Who Changed,” about a woman’s cognitive decline and attendant questions of decision-making and identity. Recently, she announced “something a little different”: a profile of Robert Munsch—author of a few classic children’s books, including I’ll Love You Forever and The Paper Bag Princess—as his dementia progresses. Munsch, at 80, can still be a goofball, but he’s no longer engaged with the young people whose ideas he enthusiastically shaped into stories. Engelhart’s portait of Munsch is a tender tribute to a crucial component of his artistic practice: listening to young people.

Whenever Munsch did write more serious stories, the publishers didn’t seem to want them. He told me about a story he had written about a little girl whom he met while performing at a children’s hospital in Toronto, around Christmastime. The girl died shortly after that visit, and Munsch tried to imagine what happened to her next.

“The story was: The kid woke up in the middle of the road, and she starts walking,” Munsch told me. “She says: ‘This is weird. I used to be in a hospital. What’s going on?’ She comes to two signs: One says ‘Heaven,’ and the other says ‘Hell.’ She says, ‘Oh, I understand.’” So the little girl goes to heaven, but she finds that she is not on the list for entry to heaven. Then she goes to hell, but she’s not on the list there either. Munsch paused in his retelling and looked toward Ann, who was sitting beside him. “And … I forget what happened.”