Watty Piper

Watty Piper is not a he nor a she but a they. Piper is the name the editors at Platt & Munk publishing company used for a collection of books, probably penned in-house or by authors hired to write for children. No one is certain who wrote books such as The Little Engine That Could because in 1978 Platt & Munk merged with Grosset & Dunlap. The merger required a move for Platt & Munk from the Bronx to Manhattan. Somewhere along the line, the children's division records were discarded or lost. Almost all of the Piper books are anthologies of folk tales, fairy tales, and re-tellings of popular stories or poems. The Piper name appears as the editor or re-teller of fictional stories and as the author of informational nonfiction books, such as about trucks or animals.