Author of over 400 Books for Children and Adults
I began the COMMANDER TOAD books because I saw an article in the local newspaper about a boy and his frog who had just won a jumping-frog contest. The frog’s name was “Star Warts.” I thought it would be funnier if the frog had been a toad, since the old superstition is that toads gives you
These stories and poems–some reprints–are all about the undersea folk. Mermaids, mermen, selchies, undines, merrows, the sea gods. Stories range from the tragic “The Lady and the Merman,” to the angry “The Undine,” to the terrifying “The Malaysian Mer.” Wiesner would win the Caldecott Medal a few years later.
This is the book I always use when I do storytelling concerts. It’s fun to tell and always gets listeners–young and old–in a good mood. Princess Miserella is the ugly sleeper of the title. The heroine is Plain Jane. She is ably assisted by the old fairy and Prince Jojo, the youngest son of a youngest
An Arthurian spoof, with animals instead of people: King Earthor (an owl), Sir Belliful (a groundhog), Sir Tarryhere (a tortoise), Sir Gimmemore (a rabbit) Sir Runsalot (a mouse) and the Wizard Squirrelin. The knights and wizard go off to save the kingdom, sneak past a dragon, and finally manage
I always called this “Romeo and Juliet in a Shaker community.” An historical novel, with romantic elements where no romances were supposed to flourish, this book takes the reader back to a New England sect in the 1850s. The book–one of my own personal favorites–is under option for the movies.
Subtitled “Fantasy, Faerie, and Folklore in the Literature of Childhood,” this small book of essays was first my position papers for the EdD I never quite got. Originally published in hardcover by Philomel and then brought out a few years later in a trade paperback, this book of essays has become well
Published simultaneously in hardcover and paperback, this was the second (and alas, last) in the series of science fiction mysteries. I actually had written a lot of the third book when this particular line of Knopf books was declared dead. That’s publishing for you.
A short science fiction novel about a runaway boy who catches a ride with a van delivering hand-signing chimps to a California lab. A big earthquake destroys the road, tips over the van, kills the driver, and boy and chimp have to make their way through a devastated countryside to San Francisco.
This tall tale is based on some Stemple family history. My husband, David Stemple, was born and brought up inWest Virginia, up in the mountains, We had a number of family vacations there. He actually had an Uncle Lemon. David’s older brother Bill taught him to “fish for chickens.” FJ (for
I thought of this as a possible series and then never wrote a second book. About a group of girls (and one boy who is an honorary girl) who solve mysteries.