Yes, they are back. I gave the editor a whole raft of choices—eating monsters, monsters taking a bath, going to camp, and she said. “What about sports?” I wrote it and wanted to call it “Warty Monsters, Sporty Monsters,” but cooler heads (the editor’s) prevailed
The Hostage Prince
My son Adam and I had begun a possible series/trilogy, got as far as a shaky first chapter and an even shakier proposal, and put it aside for stuff that was working better for us. And about five years later, editor Sharyn November asked me if I was interested in doing a middle grade fantasy
The Emily Sonnets: The Life of Emily Dickinson
Over a period of seven years, I wrote a sonnet a year about the life of my favorite poet (and neighbor!) Emily Dickinson. Not looking to get them published, not at first. Just writing them. They certainly didn’t seem to me to be something either an adult poetry publisher would want or something
Grumbles from the Forest
Rebecca Kai Dotlich and I wanted to write a book of poems together. We tried several ideas, but the one that seemed to catch fire—and catch the eye of an editor was a book of fairy tale poems each fairy tale with a poem by each of us.
Wee Rhymes
The then head of Simon & Schuster’s children’s book trade department, and my old friend, Rubin Pfeffer came to my house to visit with me and my very ill husband, David. The three of us told stories, laughed, lifted the spirits of everyone in the room.
Ekaterinoslav: A Family’s Passage to America
I had tried for years to write a memoir of my father’s family and their travels to America from a small shtetel (Jewish village) in the Ukraine in the early 1900s. I’d done a quasi first chapter, written a children’s book that fictionalized one of the funniest of our family stories—called And Twelve Chinese Acrobats.
Jewish Fairy Tale Feasts
Several years ago, my daughter Heidi and I published a book called FAIRY TALE FEASTS. She is a great cook and I am a pretty good reteller of folk tales. The book became successful and iconic which means it sold enough copies to make everyone happy, and no one else had done anything like it in the field.
How Do Dinosaurs Say Happy Chanukah?
How Do Dinosaurs Say Happy Chanukah and How Do Dinosaurs Say Merry Christmas were featured in USA Today on Thursday, November 29 in a holiday round-up:
How Do Dinosaurs Say Merry Christmas
How Do Dinosaurs Say Happy Chanukah and How Do Dinosaurs Say Merry Christmas were featured in USA Today on Thursday, November 29 in a holiday round-up:
Waking Dragons
After doing the monster books, and the How Do Dinosaur books, I decided to try the same kind of simply rhymes with humor on dragons. This one is the first of what I hope will be a series. I adore Anderson’s cheery pictures.