Picture Book

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

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 actually wrote this original fairy tale in answer to something illustrator Ed Young said. He’d originally signed on to do the art for the book “The Seeing Stick” and then pulled out of the project saying “I can’t work on this because the princess is not perfect.” (In the book she is blind and a whiner, though

The Springfield Museum was putting together a doll and dollhouse show and asked me to write a little story that they could use as their catalog. Allen Epstein, a local photographer, was assigned to work with me. I wrote a story about Hannah (portrayed by my daughter Heidi) who goes into the

I wrote the first draft of this counting rhyme on the drive home from New York City. Normally a three hour drive, it took me over five hours as I kept pulling off the road to scribble stuff down. Revisions took another couple of days. Very rare for me to work so quickly. The repetitive verse, in which the

My children and our acres of milkweed inspired this book about the day in the life of a little boy and his brother and sister. Local photographer Gabe Cooney took the pictures. The children were four, six, and eight at the time. We called the title page picture of Adam in the photographer’s oversized

An original fairy tale about a fisherlad who meets a magical talking fish and rescues her, done with his own skills and not magic. I love the story, but the pictures puzzle me. It is clearly a Celtic story–all the clues are there: a green island, a coracle (a skin boat) and references to Irish poets and Scottish folk

This folk parable of friendship began with the rock-and-roll song “Joy to the World” in which the group Three Dog Night sang “I’m a deep sea diver, I’m a rainbow rider. . .” and it started me thinking. English illustrator Michael Foreman’s glorious color-drenched pictures

Another one of my original fairy tales, this story came out of our nine-month camping trip in Europe, and especially our time in Greece. A boy with wings is born into a poor herder’s family, and he is considered deformed. But when he saves his father during a freak snow storm, he is