When my husband David was desperately ill with the cancer that finally killed him, I began to write this little rhymed story as a memorial to him and the fine father he had been to our three children. And a brilliant grandfather as well.
My Uncle Emily
I have loved Emily Dickinson’s poetry (and her life story) for as long as I can remember. My husband and I moved to the Connecticut River Valley near Amherst where Dickinson had lived all her life, first to Conway in the mid ’60s where we our first
Naming Liberty
At first the editor, Pat Gauch, and I were talking about a book simply relating the building of the Statue of Liberty, a new project for Jim Burke with whom I had done the successful My Brother’s Flying Machine. However, as I began my research, I found too many other picture books-some quite wonderful
Neptune Rising
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.
No Bath Tonight
My son Adam was accident prone as a child, his brother Jason hated to take baths. I combined the two of them into Jeremy the star of this picture book. When Grandma comes and manages to get Jeremy into the tub by reading his “kid leaves” I realized that here was the grandmother I wanted to be
Nocturne
A tone poem about a boy going to bed which I wrote for artist Anne Hunter after seeing her portfolio. I call this my homage to Dylan Thomas, because of the sensuous wordplay in the text. To make up the word “hullaballooning” it took me well over a week. Poems are like that.
Not All Princesses Dress in Pink
I was visiting Simon & Schuster and just saying goodbye to my wonderful editor, Alexandra Cooper after a long and thoughtful meeting. Standing at the door, ready to leave, I said, “Is there anything you would love to see, a book you’d always wanted to have.”
Not One Damsel in Distress
Move over, Xena! This collection of thirteen retold folk tales about strong young women come from every corner of the globe. From Bradamante, the fierce medieval knight from “The Song of Roland,” to Li Chi
O Jerusalem
A young editor at Scholastic, knowing that the 3,000th anniversary of Jerusalem was at hand (how do editors know these things????) asked me to write a book of poems about the City of Peace. I had visited it only once, way back in 1966,
Off We Go!
A bouncy rhyme for the littlest book lovers, with onomatopoeic words, that take a little mouse, duck, frog, mole, snake, spider, and duck off to their grandmothers’ houses. I began this book when