Kate Douglas Wiggin

Kate Douglas Wiggin (1856–1923) was an American educator and author. Born in Philadelphia and raised in Maine, she trained as a kindergarten teacher and in 1878 opened the first free kindergarten in San Francisco, writing The Birds' Christmas Carol to raise money for it. Her best-known novel, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903), about an imaginative girl sent to live with her aunts, was a great popular success, and Mother Carey's Chickens and other books followed. With her sister Nora Archibald Smith she wrote on kindergarten education and edited collections of fairy tales and verse for children.