Robert McCloskey (September 15, 1914 – June 30, 2003) was an American author and illustrator of children's books. McCloskey, well-known for his portrayals of New England, wrote and illustrated eight books, the most famous of which was Make Way for Ducklings. Published in 1941, Make Way for Ducklings tells of a mallard family that comes to live in a pond in the Public Garden in the center of Boston, Massachusetts and how a friendly policeman stops traffic when the mother takes her eight ducklings across the street.

This story has become an institution in Boston, and in 2003, it was named the official children's book of Massachusetts. In 1987, sculptor Nancy Schön created a bronze version of Mrs. Mallard and the ducklings in the Public Garden, which are climbed on by thousands of children every year.

The park is also the site of an annual Make Way for Ducklings Mother's Day parade, featuring hundreds of children dressed in the costumes of their favorite characters. In McCloskey's hometown of Hamilton, Ohio, there is another statue based on his writing. It depicts Lentil and his dog from Lentil (1940).

In the book, the dog is unnamed, but after a competition among schoolchildren, the dog is now known as Harmony. Many of McCloskey's books were set on the Maine coast, including One Morning in Maine and Burt Dow, Deep Water-man. McCloskey was also the author and illustrator of the Homer Price stories, featuring a boy in a small Midwestern city whose curiosity and ingenuity leads him to foil bank robbers, find the world's largest weed and repair a doughnut machine so well that it can't be shut off.

A chapter from Homer Price was adapted into a short film, The Doughnuts (1963). The same chapter was adapted for an ABC Weekend Special called "Homer and the Wacky Doughnut Machine" (1977).

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