Born in Philadelphia on September 28, 1856, Kate Douglas Wiggin was brought up in the backdrop of the American Civil War. After her graduation, Kate moved with her family to Santa Barbara, California. She joined the kindergarten training class at the Pacific Model Training School for Kindergartners from where she graduated in 1878. Kate headed the Silver Street Kindergarten in San Francisco, which was the first free kindergarten on the West Coast of the US. Her first books, The Story of Patsy (1883) and The Birds’ Christmas Carol (1887) were a huge success. Kate’s famous works include Timothy’s Quest (1890), The Village Watch-Tower (1895), Penelope’s Progress (1898), The Diary of a Goose Girl (1902), Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903), New Chronicles of Rebecca (1907), Mother Carey’s Chickens (1911), A Child’s Journey with Dickens (1912), and The Romance of a Christmas Card (1916). Kate founded the Salmon Falls Library in Quillcote, Maine, in 1911. She suffered ill health and breathed her last on August 24, 1923, in Harrow, England. Her memoir My Garden of Memory was published posthumously in 1923.