As a writer, Ms. Kuskin worked with some of the country’s best-known artists. Among her most widely praised books are two she did with the noted illustrator Marc Simont, “The Philharmonic Gets Dressed” (1982) and “The Dallas Titans Get Ready for Bed” (1986), both published by Harper & Row.  In both books Ms. Kuskin describes in spare, lyrical prose things that happen when we are not around to see them. In the first, members of a symphony orchestra prepare to go to work. In the second, football players divest themselves postgame of layer upon layer and then, looking “like small wet whales,” shower.  Ms. Kuskin also “collaborated” with the American painter Milton Avery. Mr. Avery, who died in 1965, left behind a series of enigmatic paintings he had done to illustrate a children’s story by a friend, the writer H. R. Hays. Deemed too expensive to produce, the project was abandoned, and Mr. Hays’s original text was lost.  In her 1994 book “Paul” (HarperCollins), Ms. Kuskin linked Mr. Avery’s strange, haunting images — which include a flying pig, a singing cat and a fish soaring through the night sky — with a new narrative of her own chronicling a boy’s magical journey.  Karla Seidman was born in Manhattan on July 17, 1932, and reared mostly in Greenwich Village. She attended Antioch College before transferring to Yale, from which she received a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1955. Her first book, “Roar and More” (Harper, 1956), was born of her senior graphic-arts project at Yale, for which she had to design and print a book on a small press.  Ms. Kuskin’s first marriage, to Charles M. Kuskin, ended in divorce; her second husband, William L. Bell, died in 2006. She is survived by two children from her first marriage, Nicholas, of Pelham, N.Y., and Julia Kuskin of Seattle; and three grandchildren.  Her other books include “Jerusalem, Shining Still” (Harper & Row, 1987; illustrated by David Frampton); “The Upstairs Cat” (Clarion, 1997; illustrated by Howard Fine), a verse parable about a long-running feline border dispute that emphasizes the futility of war; and “Moon, Have You Met My Mother? The Collected Poems of Karla Kuskin” (Laura Geringer, 2003; illustrated by Sergio Ruzzier). Ms. Kuskin also wrote widely about children’s literature and was a frequent contributor on the subject to The New York Times Book Review.  Ms. Kuskin thought deeply for decades about the act of making poetry, and some of her poems were wry commentaries on the poetic process itself. They were couched in ways young readers were sure to understand, as in this untitled verse from “Near the Window Tree”:  Too many people write about the moon.  The stars are small and high  The clock unwinds its ever-ticking tune  A radish rises in the waiting sky.  A previous version of this obituary misstated a credit for an illustration from “Under My Hood I Have a Hat,” by Karla Kuskin. The illustrator was Fumi Kosaka, not Ms. Kuskin, and the image has been removed.  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B8 of the New York edition with the headline: Karla Kuskin, 77, Creator Of Witty Children’s Books. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Ms. Kuskin was a noted children’s author and illustrator whose work combined sly wit with deep thoughtfulness about the essential natures of people, animals and things.