Giving Mirth [Appreciation of Jean Kerr]

“Now that almost all of her books are out of print, however, she may be best known as the Doris Day character in the treacly 1960 film version of Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, which erases Kerr’s extraordinary literary career and morphs her into a home remodeling-obsessed, suburban stay-at-home mom. While the movie’s producers may have been trying to streamline Kerr’s discursive collection of essays into a standard-issue Hollywood plotline, the result completely misses the point of Kerr’s work: She wrote about combining work and family at a time when that was still an unusual choice for an upper-middle-class mother.” Elizabeth Austin —Giving Mirth [Appreciation of Jean Kerr]Washington Monthly)