Little Miss Google Doodle: Happy Birthday, Roger Hargreaves

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Google Doodle of Mr. Happy

Roger Hargreaves, creator of the popular Mr. Men children’s books, would have turned 76 today. Google pays tribute to him with several different doodles featuring images of his popular characters.

Born Charles Roger Hargreaves, the British author and illustrator was best known for his stories and illustrations of characters like Little Miss Chatterbox, Mr. Topsy Turvy and Mr. Rush. The Mr. Men and Little Miss series have 90 books in total, each one about a character whose name reflects his or her personality and appearance.

(More on TIME.com: See the top 10 kids’ book series we miss)

The first story, Mr. Tickle, was published in 1971. The author’s son, Adam, allegedly asked his father what a tickle looked like. Hargreaves responded with a stroke of creative genius: what began as a round orange figure with long, curved arms grew into a massive collection of classics.

In 1981, Hargreaves introduced female characters to his repertoire as well with the completion of Little Miss Bossy, the first of 42 Little Miss books. Hargreaves died of a stroke in 1988 at age 53 and his son, the original inspiration for the stories, continued the series, publishing some characters that his father created before dying.

PHOTOS: The story of Google Doodles

Little Miss’ legacy lives on today: in February, it was announced that 20th Century Fox had partnered with producer Shawn Levy to adapt the series for an animated feature.

NewsFeed joins Google in remembering our childhood and one man who helped create it. If you move your cursor over the doodle, you can see the name of the character pictured. After ten minutes of refreshing we found 16 different designs — see if you can spot any more!

PHOTOS: Kids’ books come to life