Watty Piper

Photo of Arnold Munk courtesy of Janet Fenton

Watty Piper is neither a he nor a she, but a they. Arnold Munk was the owner of Platt & Munk, a publishing company of books for children. While Munk certainly used Watty Piper as a pen name, the company penned books in-house but also hired outside authors. As a result, no one is completely 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.