Author of over 400 Books for Children and Adults
This feminist counting rhyme origin story began when I saw Ruth Councell’s pictures for my book What Rhymes With Moon. She had hung all the pictures on clothesline around the inside of her house and had a party for viewing. The editor came, too, and we found ourselves gobsmacked in
The third of four music books I did for Boyds Mills. Adam was wonderful to work with, shipping me off the simple arrangements which I then played on the piano. We figured if I could sight read them, ANYONE could! Many were animal songs I’d taught him when he was a child. I picked the songs, wrote
An original fairy tale about a child whose sorceress stepmother leaves her out in the woods to die. Jane Dyer wanted to illustrate an original fairy tale and I had the first three pages of this one done, without a plot in sight. The editor Maria Modugno put it under contract and hoped I’d find a story in
An original fairy tale about a good woman, the devil, a bet between the angels and gargoyles on a French cathedral, and an ugly little boy. The climax takes place on Christmas eve. I began the story after a visit to Paris with my husband, where we spent the weekend with one of my editors who was
This is a book of nonsense poems, about made up animals. Like the Canterlope and the Raggit. As I am an incorrigible punster, I had a ball working on these rhymes. Obviously Janet Street enjoyed herself, too, as the ebullient pictures show.
My editor at Little Brown, the marvelous Maria Modugno, sent me a picture by a young artist named Laurel Molk. It was a charming water color of mice dressed in Halloween costumes and playing musical instruments. “We love her work,” Maria said, “but she can’t write a story. Can you do something for
Almost ten years after my father died, I wrote this rhymed picture book about a boy on the day of his grandfather’s funeral. Why rhyme? I have absolutely no idea, but it was one of those books that simply poured out. The initial writing took several days and then I was weeks worrying it over.
This is one of the poems from “The Three Bears Rhyme Book” made into a Big Book and illustrated by a young Russian illustrator. The cover is actually too big to scan properly.
I was challenged by an editor to write a repetitive nursery rhyme. So I began it “Mouse’s house is very small, very small, very small. Hardly any room at all for anyone but mouse.” And then the editor turned the book down. So I turned around and sold it to my wonderful editor at Putnam
This book about the rain forest in occasional rhyme began when one of the Save the Rain forest groups asked me to write a book for Laura Regan to illustrate. I adored her bold, color-drenched work. But I said they needed to find a publisher before I’d start. I knew there would be lots and lots of research ahead.