PASSINGS: Bernard Waber

Bernard Waber, 91, the author of such children’s favorites as “The House on East 88th Street” and “Lyle, Lyle Crocodile,” died Thursday at his Long Island, N.Y., home after a long illness, according to a statement from his publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Waber debuted as an author in 1962 with “The House on East 88th Street.” The book introduced readers to the lovable Lyle, first spotted in a bathtub in an Upper East Side brownstone. Lyle’s story continued in “Lyle Finds His Mother,” “Lyle and the Birthday Party” and other works.

Waber also wrote non-Lyle books, including “Ira Sleeps Over,” in which a boy fears that he will be teased for bringing a favorite stuffed teddy bear to a friend’s house.

FOR THE RECORD:
Bernard Waber obituary: A news obituary of author Bernard Waber, who wrote and illustrated “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile” and other children’s books, reported his date of birth as Sept. 27, 1924. He was born in 1921. —

The publishing company said Waber’s 33 books have sold 1.75 million copies.

In 1987, HBO aired a musical cartoon version of “Lyle, Lyle Crocodile.”

Waber was born Sept. 27, 1924, in Philadelphia. As a boy he got an after-school job cleaning up a movie theater between shows. “Admission to a movie theater free of charge was living and breathing my own fantasy,” he recalled. “Each day I raced from school to theater ... and caught the final 10 or 15 minutes of ... a daily new feature film. Following the performance, having seen only the ending, I would try to reconstruct what I imagined to be the middle and beginning. It occurs to me that this was my earliest attempt at plotting.”

He enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania intending to study finance but left to serve in the Army during World War II. When he returned, he studied at the Philadelphia College of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, then began a career as a commercial artist and graphic designer for magazines. Encouraged by colleagues, he began submitting stories to publishers in the early 1960s.

-- Los Angeles Times staff and wire reports

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