Young readers lost a great friend when Honolulu artist and author Martha Alexander, who wrote and/or illustrated more than 60 books for children, died Jan. 31 from an aneurysm.

Alexander's extraordinary career began in New York in 1965 with her first book illustrated for Harper & Row called "Come and See Me," by Mary Kennedy.

"I always knew I wanted to do children's books, even when I was in art school," Alexander once told me. "I feel like I know what makes children tick. They are so open, and I haven't lost touch with my own vulnerability as a child. Almost all of my books are involved with some feeling of a child, being small, or being left out, and they really come from my own childhood."

"The wonderful thing about Martha's work is that it showed such sweet empathy with her characters," said Arthur Levine, the American editor of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. "Their joy was her joy, their fears were hers. At least it felt that way, which is all an artist can ask. Her art was pretty without being precious, sweet without being icky. And she was a truly nice person."

Born in Augusta, Ga., in 1920, Alexander moved to Ohio at age 9 and later attended the Cincinnati Academy of Fine Arts.

In 1945, Alexander and her husband, Bill Stamper, moved to Hawai'i. Both were involved in the birth of what is now the Art Center at the Honolulu Academy of Arts.

"The art school was developed to offer a learning venue for returning soldiers on the GI Bill who could not otherwise find any comparable programs in Hawai'i at the time," Alexander's son, Honolulu artist Allen Stamper, said. "Among the early students were such noted artists as Raymond Hahn, Tadashi Sato and Wally Ige."

Alexander and Stamper divorced in 1959, and the next year, Alexander's friend Ginnie Hofmann prompted her to move to New York.

"I needed to start a new life in a new place," Alexander recalled.

"She was brave and adventurous," Hofmann said last week from her home in New Jersey. "She had difficulties in her life, and she marched right through everything. She built a wonderful career from scratch."

After getting magazine work in New York, which Alexander said was unfulfilling, for fun she drew pictures of children doing nonsensical things and took them to Harper & Row, where she met two women who became instrumental in her career. Editors Charlotte Zolotow (author of "William's Doll") and Ursula Nordstrom (responsible for publishing kid's-book icons "Where the Wild Things Are" and "Charlotte's Web") liked Alexander's art and encouraged her to write. Her Harper & Row efforts turned into her first picture book, "Out! Out! Out!" published by Dial Press in 1968.

In 1969, Dial published "Blackboard Bear," Alexander's first major success — the New York Times picked it as an Outstanding Book of the Year.

"Poems and Prayers for the Very Young," a collection Alexander selected and illustrated in 1973, ranks at No. 113 on Publishers Weekly's All-Time Bestselling Children's Books in paperback list, with more than 2 million copies sold.

David Ford, publisher of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, is another Alexander fan. "I knew of her in England, even before I came back to the States," Ford said in a telephone interview, referring to his 1991 move from Walker Books in London to sister publisher Candlewick in Massachusetts. On taking the helm at Candlewick, Ford said, "One of the things I wanted most to do was to work with Martha Alexander."

Ford reunited Alexander with "Blackboard Bear" editor Amy Ehrlich for the enormously successful "A You're Adorable."

"Martha had a sparkle in her eyes. That sparkle showed she was still very much in touch with her own childhood," Ford said. "You could see her images moving."

Alexander once told me: "A couple of times I was referred to as 'the children's advocate,' which I loved."

From New York, Alexander moved to many places, including Homer, Alaska, and Yelm, Wash. She was known to close friends and family as Savanna, a name she chose because she liked it.

This year, Charlesbridge will reissue three of Alexander's picture books: "When the New Baby Comes, I'm Moving Out," "Nobody Asked ME if I Wanted a Baby Sister" and "I'll Protect You from the Jungle Beasts."

Alexander was working on a new book at the time of her death.