Author of over 400 Books for Children and Adults
Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. In this collection of poems I got to write a bunch of strange, funny, and sentimental Halloween poems. I even got to use one I had written way back in college (the ivy climbing the wall poem.) The editor told me that Elise Primavera
I began the COMMANDER TOAD books because I saw an article in the local newspaper about a boy and his frog who had just won a jumping-frog contest. The frog’s name was “Star Warts.” I thought it would be funnier if the frog had been a toad, since the old superstition is that toads gives you
My first hardcover collection of my fairy stories and adult stories, because the editor at Schocken was a fan. He left before the book was finished to form his own company, Peter Bedrick Books. Never a good start for a book, I have found, being orphaned like that. There was an British edition as well.
I began the COMMANDER TOAD books because I saw an article in the local newspaper about a boy and his frog who had just won a jumping-frog contest. The frog’s name was “Star Warts.” I thought it would be funnier if the frog had been a toad, since the old superstition is that toads gives you
These stories and poems–some reprints–are all about the undersea folk. Mermaids, mermen, selchies, undines, merrows, the sea gods. Stories range from the tragic “The Lady and the Merman,” to the angry “The Undine,” to the terrifying “The Malaysian Mer.” Wiesner would win the Caldecott Medal a few years later.
This is the book I always use when I do storytelling concerts. It’s fun to tell and always gets listeners–young and old–in a good mood. Princess Miserella is the ugly sleeper of the title. The heroine is Plain Jane. She is ably assisted by the old fairy and Prince Jojo, the youngest son of a youngest
An Arthurian spoof, with animals instead of people: King Earthor (an owl), Sir Belliful (a groundhog), Sir Tarryhere (a tortoise), Sir Gimmemore (a rabbit) Sir Runsalot (a mouse) and the Wizard Squirrelin. The knights and wizard go off to save the kingdom, sneak past a dragon, and finally manage
I always called this “Romeo and Juliet in a Shaker community.” An historical novel, with romantic elements where no romances were supposed to flourish, this book takes the reader back to a New England sect in the 1850s. The book–one of my own personal favorites–is under option for the movies.
Subtitled “Fantasy, Faerie, and Folklore in the Literature of Childhood,” this small book of essays was first my position papers for the EdD I never quite got. Originally published in hardcover by Philomel and then brought out a few years later in a trade paperback, this book of essays has become well
Published simultaneously in hardcover and paperback, this was the second (and alas, last) in the series of science fiction mysteries. I actually had written a lot of the third book when this particular line of Knopf books was declared dead. That’s publishing for you.