Happy_90th,_Marcia_Brown!_(Reteller/illustrator,_“

She lives in Laguna Hills, California. (Or, possibly, West Redding,
Connecticut.)

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=%22marcia%20brown%22%20stone%2...up&um=1
(pictures of "Stone Soup")

From Major Authors and Illustrators for Children and Young Adults:

Brown does not believe that artists and writers should be tied to one
particular style. In Lotus Seeds: Children, Pictures, and Books, she
noted that "a style is the way you walk and talk, what you are as a
person. . . . Style, in the larger sense, is something quite
different. An artist's primary preoccupation is his own development,
the perfection of himself as an instrument . . . the better to sing
his song." Above all else, Brown is concerned with getting her books'
message across clearly to her young audience. "I have never felt that
children need any particular kind of drawing any more than they need
any particular kind of writing," she remarked in Horn Book Magazine.
"The clarity, the vitality of the message, the genuineness of the
feeling--that is what is important."

http://www.albany.edu/museum/wwwmuseum/Brown/about_2.html
(this may surprise you, regarding the languages her books have been
printed in)
“Brown is the recipient of three Caldecott Medals, for Cinderella
(1955), Once a Mouse (1962), and Shadow (1983), and six Caldecott
Honors for Stone Soup (1948), Henry-Fisherman (1950), Dick Whittington
and his Cat (1951), Skipper John’s Cook (1952), Puss in Boots (1953),
and The Steadfast Tin Soldier (1954). Brown has received numerous
other awards for her work and, in 1992, was honored with the Laura
Ingalls Wilder Award for her lifetime body of distinguished works in
children’s literature.”

(According to one source, she focuses on Chinese art these days.)

http://www.albany.edu/feature/marcia_brown/
(long 1996 article, with her artwork)

“At one time, Marcia Brown thought about becoming a doctor. If medical
school hadn't been so expensive, she says, she might actually have
done that. But as one of three sisters growing up in a minister's
family during the Depression, she knew she had to settle on something
more practical: teaching………

“In 1943, at the age of 25, she took a deep breath, left her teaching
job and set out for New York City to begin six years of service as a
children's librarian with the New York Public Library. Her first four
books were finished while she was working in the Library's Central
Children's Room, where she gained valuable experience in storytelling
and was exposed to the Library's extensive international and
historical collections. At the same time, she continued to study
painting under Yasuo Kuniyoshi and Stuart Davis at the New School for
Social Research.”

http://book.consumerhelpweb.com/authors/brown/brown.htm
(photo & partial(?) bibliography)

library.albany.edu/speccoll/marciabrown.htm
(more artwork - you have to click on "Once Upon a Drawing" and then
again to see her ballet illustrations)

http://library.albany.edu/speccoll/findaids/mss005.htm
(papers)

http://www.lib.usm.edu/~degrum/html/research/findaids/brownmar.htm
(more papers)

Lenona.