Thomas Rockwell, who grew up as a character in the illustrations that his father, Norman Rockwell, created for The Saturday Evening Post and later became a successful author of children’s books, including “How to Eat Fried Worms,” a gross-out novel devoured by millions of grade-school students, died on Sept. 27 in Danbury, Conn. He was 91.
The cause of his death, in a hospice facility, was Parkinson’s disease and other ailments, his daughter, Abigail Rockwell, said. He had lived for many years in a converted chicken shed near Poughkeepsie, N.Y., a setting that evoked the small-town backdrop of his father’s artwork.
Mr. Rockwell appears in several of his father’s well-known works: as a mischievous boy sitting at his sister’s dressing table and reading her diary; flexing his not-very-big muscles in a mirror, a dog at his side; and as a high school graduate, ” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>in cap and gown, clutching a rolled-up diploma.
Posing for a painting that depicted him rummaging through his grandfather’s overcoat pocket was one of his favorite childhood memories, he told Cobblestone, a children’s magazine, in 1989. That image appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post in 1936.
“I had to stand on tiptoe while reaching into the overcoat, which was hung on an easel,” Mr. Rockwell said, describing how his father had composed the painting. “My father gave me a present for posing, and I remember feeling so proud and pleased that I’d helped him with his work. I know I’ve never enjoyed any gift as much as that one.”
Norman Rockwell, who died in 1978, wanted his children to become artists, even though he sometimes said otherwise.
“He’d say he wanted us to go into business so that we could support him in his old age while he sat outside on the porch,” Mr. Rockwell told the magazine Education Update in 2003. “But the truth is that my father couldn’t understand why anybody would want to be anything else but an artist.”
In his 20s, Mr. Rockwell owned a used-book store and harbored hopes of making a living as a writer when his father asked him to help write his autobiography, “My Adventures as an Illustrator,” which was published in 1960.
Thomas Rockwell followed with two books of his own, both written for children and adolescents: “Rackety-Bang and Other Verses,” a book of poetry, and “Squawwwk!,” a fantastical novel about a bird that hatches from a schoolbook and grows “as big as Yankee Stadium.”
Those books had only middling sales. But worms would soon change his fortunes.
In the early 1970s, Mr. Rockwell met with an editor in Manhattan about a manuscript he had sent her.
“She hadn’t liked the manuscript at all,” he was quoted as saying in the book “How Writers Write” (1992), a collection of author interviews by Pamela Lloyd. “She picked out one page and thought that was good and suggested I write something less fanciful, maybe more realistic.”
Driving home, Mr. Rockwell sulked.
“I was really feeling terrible that my manuscript had been rejected,” he said. “I felt as if I had been eating worms.”
An old children’s tune — “Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I think I’ll go eat worms” — suddenly popped into his head. So did an idea: a novel about a boy who eats worms.
“Then came the difficult part: Why is somebody going to eat worms?” he said. “And even before I got home, I thought: ‘Well, make it a bet.’”
“How to Eat Fried Worms,” published in 1973, tells the story of two elementary-school boys, Billy and Alan. Billy is new in school and just wants to fit in. Alan is a bully. The boys make a bet: If Billy eats 15 worms in 15 days, Alan will give him $50; if Billy doesn’t, he will give Alan $50.
“Billy thinks worms are disgusting, but he eats them fried, boiled, rolled in cornmeal, with macaroni, in ice cream, and with lots of ketchup, mustard, honey and horseradish,” an 8-year-old named Jaden wrote in a roundup of children’s book reviews for The Los Angeles Times. “Will Billy eat all the worms in time and win? Read this exciting, funny book to find out!”
Children, especially reluctant-to-read boys, loved the book. More than three million copies have been sold, and it was adapted into a film in 2006.
In an interview with Beliefnet, an online religion news site, to promote the movie, Mr. Rockwell said he hadn’t written the book with a moral in mind.
“I was just writing it for fun, but I do think it does indicate that sometimes you have to eat worms to get something nice or to get through something,” he said. “You have to persevere. You know, I could have just eaten the worm that the editor had given me and quit writing — but I didn’t.”
Thomas Rhodes Rockwell was born on March 13, 1933, in New Rochelle, N.Y., and grew up in Arlington, Vt. His mother, Mary (Barstow) Rockwell, was a teacher and aspiring poet. She shared her work with her husband, but never published.
For many years, Tom didn’t realize that his father was famous.
“He worked all the time in the studio, and, as a kid, I didn’t think famous people had to work so hard,” Mr. Rockwell told Cobblestone magazine. “I’d often go into the studio to watch him paint. I’d sit on a long bench and bang my heels on the bench because my feet didn’t reach the floor.”
He credited his mother, who had a large collection of children’s books, with inspiring him to become a writer.
After graduating from Bard College in 1956 with a degree in English, he wrote for a horticulture magazine and sold used books before beginning work on his father’s autobiography.
He married Gail Sudler, an artist who illustrated many of his books, in 1955. They were married until her death in 2010.
Mr. Rockwell went on to publish more than a dozen other children’s books, including “The Neon Motorcycle,” “How to Fight a Girl” and “How to Get Fabulously Rich.”
He also directed the Norman Rockwell Family Agency, which licenses his father’s works. In 2013 he and his daughter vehemently condemned “American Mirror,” a biography of Norman Rockwell written by Deborah Solomon, an art critic who contributes to The New York Times. Her book suggested that the artist was secretly gay and harbored pedophilic impulses.
Mr. Rockwell and his daughter sent critics and journalists a detailed critique of the book disputing its sexual suggestions.
“The biography is so poor and so inflammatory, we just had to respond,” Mr. Rockwell told The Boston Globe.
Ms. Solomon defended the book. She never said Norman Rockwell was gay, she said, adding, “I feel like this is really the first book that convincingly makes the case for Rockwell’s artistic importance, and I would hope to keep the discussion on that subject.”
In addition to his daughter, Mr. Rockwell is survived by his son, Barnaby; his older brother, Jarvis, a painter; and a granddaughter. His younger brother, Peter, a sculptor, died in 2020.
“How to Eat Fried Worms” was rejected by more than 20 editors.
“I knew kids would love it,” the children’s book editor Richard Jackson, who took a pass on the book when he was at Bradbury Press, told School Library Journal. “But I couldn’t bear to read about those worms over and over again.”
As it turns out, Mr. Rockwell couldn’t stomach them either.
“When I finished the book, I said to myself, ‘If a publisher takes it, then I’ll eat a worm,’” he told Cobblestone magazine. “But I just never found the time.”
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