Author of over 400 Books for Children and Adults
This original fairy tale about a Chinese princess who is blind is one of my own personal favorites. Surprisingly, I started it after reading an article in the magazine “Field and Stream.” When I first read a draft to my writing group, the last line was not in place. One of the writers asked, “Is the old
I have always loved Chagall’s bizarre, colorful flying-in-the-sky-fiddler’s-on-the-roof pictures. And so when Pat Lewis (now Children’s Poet Laureate of America) and I started talking about doing some books of poetry together, I offerred Chagall and his action-packed life to Pat as a prospect. We had
An original fairy tale set in Thailand and based on a line in my kite research which said that the king had kite mandarins who flew his kite at night to keep his soul above the terrors of the night. The story, written during my Quaker phase, is about speaking truth to power no matter what the cost.
This book was meant to be a companion to our successful COLOR ME A RHYME and COUNT ME A RHYME. Again I consciously decided to make the poems simpler and to concentrate on rhyming poems. But finding shapes in nature-after sun being round and moon being
This anthology has both original stories (including my much reprinted “Johanna,” about a girl who turns into a deer) and reprints. Weredogs, weredeer and werecockroaches abound. (Yes, I reprinted part of Kafka’s” Metamorphoses.”)
Eight new stories about Robin Hood and company, by such worthies as Nancy Springer, Anna Kirwan, Mary Frances Zambreno. It also includes son Adam Stemple’s first solo short story. My story is called “Our Lady of the
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.
Editor Linda Zuckerman was on a trip through New England and came across several Shaker sites. On the way home, she stopped for tea and asked me if I’d be interested in doing a non-fiction book on the Shakers. As I’d always been fascinated by them, I readily agreed, and after a year’s worth
The original story was (I thought) better written but I had to revise it downwards for the editor in order to make it fit into a line of easy-readers. An original tale about a prince who decides to live the simple life and discovers just how difficult that is. This book was written during the 1970s
I wrote part of this book (slightly altered) as a poem which was published by ricket Magazine back in the 1990s, and then over the years reworked it till it was a book about all four seasons and the circularity of nature. I hadn’t known Lisel Ashlock’s work till I saw the first sketches and fell in love with her pictures and their intricate interlock.