Steven Kroll, a prolific author of popular children’s books, many of them evoking his experiences growing up in what he called “the ethnic stew” of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, died in Manhattan on March 8. He was 69 and lived in Manhattan and Bucks County, Pa.
Steven Lawrence Kroll was born in Manhattan on Aug. 11, 1941, to Julius and Anita Kroll. His father was a diamond merchant and his mother was, for a time, the director of a school that taught shorthand. Steven, who had been editor of the literary magazine at the McBurney School in Manhattan, graduated from Harvard in 1962 with a degree in American history and literature.
He then went to London, where he was hired as an editor at Chatto & Windus, a publishing house founded in 1855. After returning to New York in 1965, he became an editor at Holt, Rinehart & Winston. By the early 1970s he was tired of improving other people’s books instead of writing his own.
In addition to his wife, who is a freelance writer, he is survived by a sister, June Anderson.
Teachers have sometimes used Mr. Kroll’s books to impart basic lessons, as is the case with “Jungle Bullies” (2006), about the hierarchy in the animal kingdom as seen through the eyes of a monkey who is pushed aside by big beasts at a watering hole. “Share it with me as a friend, don’t be mean to me again,” is a refrain throughout the book.
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