When I was little, my grandparents had a version of RUMPELSTILTSKIN that I adored. The story was strange, scary, and had these awesome ink drawings. At the time, I didn’t understand the concept that books were made by individual artists, so I never paid attention to who might have made them. They …
Last spring I got a sneak peek of a book that bowled me over, Candy Fleming and Eric Rohmann’s Giant Squid. It’s unlike anything I’ve seen before. Take a look at this opening page. That glimpse of tentacles waving in a vast full spread of undersea darkness? Gives me the shivers. The …
In 2015, illustrator Goro Fujita and I were responsible for an alien invasion. Your Alien begins when a little alien crash-lands on a boy’s front yard. The two have a great day together, but, when nighttime arrives, the boy notices something is wrong with his alien. At last, the boy …
I picked up “The Blue Whale” by Jenni Desmond because I was curious to read the story behind this beautiful and intriguing cover. And the book does begin as a story with “Once upon a time, a child took a book from a shelf and started to read.” This …
Big news! My new picture book, THE MUSIC IN GEORGE’S HEAD: GEORGE GERSHWIN CREATES RHAPSODY IN BLUE, releases from Calkins Creek today. George Gershwin’s birthday is also this month (Sept. 26), so I’m glad you stopped by to celebrate this incredible composer/pianist. You can also find out where the idea for this story came from, …
For my post today, I’m going back to a book that came out four years ago. It was a favorite back then and it seems appropriate today. As we get deeper and deeper into this campaign cycle, the volume for “contentiousness” keeps getting cranked up. The vitriol coming out of …
I loved Tammi’s recent interview with Minh Lê, and especially his reminder to picture book writers to keep things lean. As Minh put it so well: if you weigh down the manuscript with unnecessary words/details, the book might never take flight. One way to prune a manuscript is to tell …
When I wrote about Mary Petersen’s art for the book, DIG IN, by Cindy Jenson-Elliott, a commenter mentioned another book by Cindy, WEEDS FIND A WAY, illustrated by Carolyn Fisher. A picture book that celebrates weeds? How curious! I grew up with a mother and grandmothers with green thumbs, and so, probably like most …