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
Sad, Mad, Glad Hippos
Key-Porter is a Canadian publisher, and this is how I got to them. My friend Jonathan Schmidt (and ex-editor at Tor) moved to Canada to be married and settle north of the border, and soon became head of trade books there. He introduced me to the children’s book editor, Linda Prussen, hoping I
Hip Hippos
Key-Porter is a Canadian publisher, and this is how I got to them. My friend Jonathan Schmidt (and ex-editor at Tor) moved to Canada to be married and settle north of the border, and soon became head of trade books there. He introduced me to the children’s book editor, Linda Prussen, hoping I
One Hippo Hops
Pictures by Vlasta Van Kampen Key-Porter 2008 ISBN# 1554700078 Key-Porter is a Canadian publisher, and this is how I got to them. My friend Jonathan Schmidt (and ex-editor at Tor) moved to Canada to be married and settle north of the border, and soon became head of trade books there. He introduced me to the …
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
Mama’s Kiss
This book began as a shorter poem, “Mama’s Kisses,” published in Nick Jr. Magazine in 2002. And then I expanded it into a picture book, rewrote it a dozen or more times for myself and then the editor. That’s how it goes!
Here’s a Little Poem
Andrew Fusek Peters of Shropshire, England, the well-known young (but VERY tall) British poet for children, emailed me and asked if I would be interested in working on an anthology of poems about a child’s day with him. He would choose the British poets and me the Americans. He’d already
How Do Dinosaurs Go to School
The idea for this book came from the Scholastic booksellers, and boy! were they right. I wrote it remembering my son Adam going to school, and my grandson (Adam’s son), and all the trouble they got into being boisterous, and mouthy, and smart. No one should break boisterous little boys of their
Baby Bear’s Big Dreams
This third book about Baby Bear centers on his wishes for what he will get to be when he grows up. It was first called BABY BEAR GETS BIG and no one at the publishing company liked that. We went through about a dozen permutations until settling on the title. I actually think the title was my
Shape Me a Rhyme
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