Amy Ella Blanchard (June 28, 1854 – July 4, 1926) was an American writer of children's literature. Amy Ella Blanchard was at first a teacher of art in the Woman's College in Baltimore, now Goucher College. She taught school while studying art.[3][2] She then taught drawing and painting for two years in Plainfield, New Jersey.[4][5] Her first poem was published when she was 16 years old in a Salem newspaper. Three years later she published her first book, but it was not until 1893 that she obtained her first success with her stories. In 1888 she published her first book, and the first collaboration with Ida Waugh, Bonny Bairns, with the Worthington & Co. firm of New York.[3] In this book the usual order was reversed, and the pictures were illustrated with verses. The combination was not only pleasant but pretty. The lithographs were beautifully executed and did full justice to the drawings, which were of a much higher quality than usually appeared in children's picture books. The verses that accompanied them made a pleasant jingle with just sense enough to make them attractive to the chubby critic Less