In 1938 Slobodkina met the children's author Margaret Wise Brown.〔〔 In an effort to find work as an illustrator, Slobodkina wrote and illustrated a story with collage called ''Mary And The Poodies'' to present to Brown. This began a new career for Slobodkina, who illustrated many children's stories for Ms. Brown (including ''Sleepy ABCs'' and the ''Big and Little'' series) while still continuing her work as an abstract artist.〔(HarperCollins biography ).〕

During this period she was invited back to the Yaddo artist’s colony and also accepted a residency at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. In 1960, Slobodkina married William Urquhart, a business owner whom she had met in 1942 at an American Abstract Artists show. They were married for three years, but in 1963, Urquhart died after suffering from a prolonged illness. Slobodkina stated that “it took me some six years to just recover from the grief and life in general was never the same”... In 1967, Slobodkina and her mother began travelling to Florida to be close to her sister. Annual trips to the southern state soon became impractical because of her mother’s failing health and in 1979, they permanently relocated to Hallandale, Florida. After the death of Slobodkina's brother-in-law in 1974 and her mother in 1975, her sister Tamara joined her in her Hallandale home. The two sisters continued to live together for the rest of Slobodkina's life, moving from Hallandale to West Hartford, CT, then back to Great Neck before settling in Glen Head, Long Island.〔Alisha Patrick, "(Esphyr Slobodkina (1908-2002) )," Sullivan Goss website.〕