Author of over 400 Books for Children and Adults
im Burke and I wanted to do a new book together and we had a bunch of ideas, including Grizzly Adams, the Statue of Liberty, Honus Wagner, and a bunch of others. But the editor at Harper I worked with, Maria Modugno, came up with Johnny Appleseed. As he was a local boy (lived some time in Longmeadow, Massachusetts) and
I already have ten books of adult poetry that have come put of that daily poem work, and Kaddish–a book of poems in two parts, one feminist Biblical midrash and the other poems about the Holocaust–is the eleventh. The poetry publisher, Holy Cow! Press already did three of my books…
KIKKI KICKS is my first book with grandchild Ari Stemple who also writes poetry, stories, comic books, song lyrics (and music).
The poem is mine, celebrating the martial arts, but the story itself was written by Ari and me, re-calling Ari’s trials when they were badly bullied in school…
This is a comic book for adults, not children. The artist Charles Vess–whose work in comics and illustrated books I had admired for a long time–asked a number of fantasy writers to try writing a comic book story based on a
Scottish/English folk ballad. I chose “King Henry,” a ballad in the Loathly Lady tradition.
I had long wanted to do a book with Victoria Chess whose quirky illustrations of animals and children greatly appealed to me. She, it seems, wanted to work with me. She mentioned this to one editor friend who urged her to call me.
This began as an interesting quote I read in a birding magazine, moved on to a poem (I write a poem a day and send them out to over 1,000 subscribers) and at last-with some additions and fiddling– a picture book with my favorite publisher of truly elegant books, Creative Editions.
This original fairy tale was first published in the magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction before joining others in my collection of HUNDREDTH DOVE and later NEPTUNE RISING. It is clearly autobiographical as I was always trying to please my father. There are 100 numbered and signed copies plus
Songs and lap games, many of which I played with my own children when they were babies and toddlers, with musical arrangements by my son Adam who is a professional musician. Now I play “Trot, trot to Boston” and “This is the way the farmer rides” and others with my grandbabies. The Tomes art is delicious.
Before he became Children’s Poet Laureate, Pat Lewis and I had sold several other poetry collections together–Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers, the Life of Chagall in Verse, came out first. Then Take Two, our book of twin poems. (He’s a twin, I am grandmother of twins.) The third book we sold was
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.