Author of over 400 Books for Children and Adults
The Yolen-Stemples are a family of birdwatchers. (I must admit I am the least of them.having been a city girl the first fourteen years of my life.) My late husband David Stemple grew up in the mountains of West Virginia. And our three children began early, because David (“Pa” in OWL MOON) taught them how to bird.
It took Heidi and me close to fifteen years till this book finally came out. I tried it as a picture book, a middle grade novel, an easy-reader. When Heidi signed on and we did it together as a picture book (MUCH better than my first feeble attempt) we actually had a book. Scholastic bought it and put the very inventive John McKinley
Third rhymed picture for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology with pictures by my old friend Bob Marstall. Each one about a place and a resident kind of bird. In this one a boy on the beach works hard to rescue a sea star (starfish) from greedy gulls passing it around from beak to beak.
I think this is the funniest of the Dino-Sty books, because the basic premise is so absurd as Dinos bring home tigers, etc from the zoo. And Mark Teague has gone all wild and crazy with the art.
I can’t seem to get away from dinosaurs! Here J. Patrick Lewis (former Children’s Poet Laureate) and I have done a picture book’s worth of humorous poems about the “interesting” demises of prehistoric creatures, from trilobites to T Rex to dire wolves.
The second book about Little Frog (of four, one for each season) with pictures by the new but very professional and suddenly sought-after illustrator, Ellen Shi. (The first frog book was her first published book! And I found her!) In this one Little Frog is a reluctant big sister until danger threatens her baby brothers, and…
Second of the series for Cornell Lab of Ornithology,a rhymed picture book with marvelous pictures by Bob Marstall, my friend of 40 years and an Orbis Pictus award-winning illustrator. This one is set at a New England pond where the quiet of the day is broken by a raucous flock of ducks. Great back-matter by the scientists at the Lab.
I live in New England where there are bears, raccoons, bobcats, skunks, rabbits, deer, turkeys, bluejays, coyotes, opossum, chipmunks, squirrels—a regular Wild Animal Sow in our back yard on a regular basis. So when my oldest granddaughter who was house sitting for me one summer, sent me an email that read in part:
Retold folk and fairy tales from all over the world, reimagined for the youngest listeners.
This is another book that took about twelve years to come out. My part–the finding and retelling the stories–was done within months of signing the contract. But the wonderful Jane Dyer, the illustrator, had some health
This is a book of poems about things under the ground: moles, insects, drain pipes, pirate treasure, subways, magma pools, tree roots, etc. The poems were written over a number of years. The first illustrator (this would have been his first book) said yes, after the editor and I searched for the right