Author of over 400 Books for Children and Adults
I was in my final year of college when the Rocky and Bullwinkle fractured fairy tale show was on so never watched it. (And my dorm had no tv.) The next year, living in New York City in 1960, working as an editor, again no television. By 1962 I was selling my own picture books and as far as I knew, invented my own kind of fractured fairy tales.
Six of these seven fairy tales are totally original–“The Hundredth Dove,” “The Maiden Made of Fire,” “The Wind Cap,” “The White Seal Maid,” “The Promise,” “The Lady and the Merman.” The seventh, “Once A Good Man,” was based on an old story. This was the third collection of fairy tales I wrote
My dear friend and neighbor (well, two towns away) illustrator Ruth Sanderson called me up. We had done a number of books together including SLEEPING BEAUTY and WHERE HAVE THE UNICORNS GONE. She draws gorgeous horses. Owns at least one horse these days. “I want to do a horse lullabye,” she said
Daughter Heidi Stemple and I were telephoned by the editor of a new early-reading imprint “Rises” for Penguin Random house. We knew her though had never actually done a book for her. Se told us about an idea and we ran with it, and it became this book…
A new line of easy readers (the next up from my Fish School rhymed books, all for Simon & Schuster) are the INTERRUPTING COW books, This is the first, (2 and 3 are already written!) full of gag lines, puns. and each based on the interrupting cow plus…
As I began writing the second Interrupting Cow book (likely to be six of them) about a chicken–a Rhode Island Red– and why it crosses the road (each one uses an old joke at its center…the next two are about an old dog learning new tricks and a horse of a different color) I realized that all of Cow’s new friends, her accidental herd if you will, are different colors and different kinds of animals. A virtual variety.
My first real mystery for kids, based on the little town–Conway, Massachusetts–where we then lived. There had been a rash of pet thefts and this was my take on it. Allan Eitzen who did the cover and some interior illustrations would later illustrate my poetry anthology
A Christmas story in which the hapless little witch Isabel (named after my beloved mom, Isabelle) ends up helping Santa on Christmas. This sequel to “The Witch Who Wasn’t” followed the editor from Macmillan to Funk & Wagnalls. Roth’s deliciously
I worked on this little rhymed book while we traveled for nine months through Europe, before we had children. But even then I knew the kind of mother/child catechisms of big and little, loud and soft–and how-much-do-you-love-me. Bolognese’s drawings of an African-American family were way ahead of their time.
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.