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Robert Kraus, cartoonist turned author who wrote, illustrated and edited more than 100 children's books including "Leo the Late Bloomer," has died at 76.
Kraus, who also drew 21 covers and 450 cartoons for the New Yorker magazine, died Aug. 7 of congestive heart failure in a nursing home in Kent, Conn.
His books, including the 1970 favorite "Whose Mouse Are You?" earned American Library Assn., Horn Book and Children's Trade Book awards.
The charming, encouraging 1971 tale of little Leo, the underachieving lion who learns that simply trying is an achievement, was read on national television 10 years ago by then-First Lady Barbara Bush in her literacy campaign.
The book, like many written by Kraus, reflected his philosophy to "do your best," which he learned at his mother's knee.
"I find that things my mother used to say come back to me and sometimes appear in a book," Kraus said in the publication Something About the Author Autobiography Series. "[Some] of her mottoes that I use are 'do your best' and 'never give up.'...