The next year, in order to earn enough for passage to return to the US, she illustrated a story she had written before leaving for Paris, about a little girl named Sally who got a lion for her birthday.

[3] The New York Times praised it as "refreshingly imaginative" and "full of high spirited nonsense".

Her next book, Mittens, was the story of a six-year-old boy who posts an ad for his lost kitten.

It became a bestseller and was named one of the Fifty Books of the Year by the American Institute of Graphic Arts.

[1] With the exception of Herbert the Lion and Lambert's Bargain, about the birthday gift of a hyena, Newberry's subjects were all drawn from life.