Paul T. (Paul Thomas) Gilbert

For much of the early twentieth century, he worked as a newspaperman, especially with the Chicago Evening Post. Accounts of his career describe him as more than a desk writer: he also took on colorful assignments and stunts, including work connected with the circus world, which helps explain the playful energy in his later fiction.

His best-known children's writing centers on Bertram, an adventurous boy whose stories appeared in Child Life magazine in the 1930s and 1940s before being collected in books such as Bertram and His Funny Animals. These tales mix fantasy, humor, and a warm read-aloud charm that has helped keep them in circulation long after their first publication.

He also wrote for adults. His early book The Great White Tribe in Filipinia, published in 1903, drew on his observations of life in the Philippines during the American colonial period. Taken together, his work shows a writer with a reporter's eye for detail and a storyteller's taste for vivid, unusual scenes.