Author of over 400 Books for Children and Adults
When my first grandchild, Maddison Jane Piatt, was born, I hurried across many states in a plane and then a taxi and made it with two hours to spare. I had been there at my daughter’s house the week before, helping her and her partner set up the baby’s room.
The idea of a Young Heroes series came from my editor at HarperCollins, but choosing to work with Bob Harris–already my co-conspirator from Queen’s Own Fool who had a degree from St Andrews University in Classics–that was my idea.
This book, about two feral children found in India in the 1920s and brought to an orphanage, is the second in a series of real-life unsolved mysteries for kids which I have written with my daughter Heidi Stemple. The first,
This is the fourth and I believe the last of the Welcome books, my poetic paean to various ecosystems. I have only been to the Everglades once, but it is a trip not forgotten. Thank goodness the powers that be are
My daughter, Heidi, and I have always sent each other notes — sometimes quick little memos left on a pillow or inside a journal, or letters and postcards sent through the mail. Now that there is
This book of mermen stories may have the longest and most difficult gestation of any book I have ever done. It began almost 30 years ago when my friend Shulamith Oppenheim and I wrote a proposal for a children’s book called
I needed a new short story for my collection, Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast, and I found the start of Boots in my files. No memory of when it had gotten there. But it looked hopeful: the
Most of my adult short fantasy/sf fiction has never been put in a single book. I have four story collections–Tales of Wonder, Dragonfield, Merlin’s Booke, and Storyteller, plus a chapbook that are all out of print. But my more recent stories
It took about eight months to track down the lullaby rhymes for this picture book. Some I got from books, others from my husband’s graduate students and international colleagues. I wanted the rhymes in
Bonnie Verberg, who had been my editor at Harcourt and then again when she moved to Scholastic, had a baby boy. When he was a year old she called and said, “My little boy hates going to bed