Children’s Author Leighton Dies

Margaret Carver Leighton, a successful author of children’s books, most of which were built around her years as a homemaker in Virginia and many featuring characters based on her own four children, has died in Santa Monica. She was 90 and died June 19, it was reported this week.

A Radcliffe graduate who became an Army nurse in World War I, she married in 1920 and moved to Clarendon, Va., where she was raising her children when her husband died in 1935. She and her children moved to Santa Monica to live with her parents. It was there that she sold the first of the 22 books that were often choices of the Junior Literary Guild.

Her stories also appeared in such magazines as Child Life, American Girl, Classmate and anthologies and texts.

Her children, 15 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren survive her.