The Thirteen Clocks

One of the most prolific literary figures of the 20th century, James Thurber wrote countless stories, poems, satires, and fables, and he created thousands of drawings. The 13 Clocks mixes puns and nonsense in a story complete with a princess, prince, and happy ending--put together in incomparable Thurber style.

James Thurber (1894—1961), one of the outstanding American humorists and cartoonists of the twentieth century, was born in Columbus, Ohio, and launched his professional writing career as a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch in 1920. He began writing for The New Yorker in 1927 after his friend E. B. White got him a job at the magazine. Though hampered by failing eyesight, Thurber wrote nearly forty books, including collections of essays, short stories, fables, and children’s stories. He won a Tony Award for his popular Broadway play, A Thurber Carnival.

Marc Simont was born in Paris and moved to America when he was nineteen. He has illustrated nearly a hundred books, working with authors as diverse as Margaret Wise Brown and Ruth Krauss. He won a Caldecott Honor in 1950 for illustrating Krauss’s The Happy Day, and in 1957 he was awarded the Caldecott Medal for his pictures in A Tree Is Nice by Janice May Udry. He is the illustrator for the New York Review Children’s Collection’s The Backward Day. He lives with his family in West Cornwall, Connecticut.

Neil Gaiman is an award-winning author of novels, short stories, children's books, and graphic novels. Among his works are the children's books Coraline, The Wolves in the Walls, and The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish; the Sandman graphic novels series; and the fantasy novels Stardust and Smoke and Mirrors. Originally from England, Gaiman now lives in the United States.