This book began as a shorter poem, “Mama’s Kisses,” published in Nick Jr. Magazine in 2002. And then I expanded it into a picture book, rewrote it a dozen or more times for myself and then the editor. That’s how it goes!
Here’s a Little Poem
Andrew Fusek Peters of Shropshire, England, the well-known young (but VERY tall) British poet for children, emailed me and asked if I would be interested in working on an anthology of poems about a child’s day with him. He would choose the British poets and me the Americans. He’d already
How Do Dinosaurs Go to School
The idea for this book came from the Scholastic booksellers, and boy! were they right. I wrote it remembering my son Adam going to school, and my grandson (Adam’s son), and all the trouble they got into being boisterous, and mouthy, and smart. No one should break boisterous little boys of their
Baby Bear’s Big Dreams
This third book about Baby Bear centers on his wishes for what he will get to be when he grows up. It was first called BABY BEAR GETS BIG and no one at the publishing company liked that. We went through about a dozen permutations until settling on the title. I actually think the title was my
Shape Me a Rhyme
This book was meant to be a companion to our successful COLOR ME A RHYME and COUNT ME A RHYME. Again I consciously decided to make the poems simpler and to concentrate on rhyming poems. But finding shapes in nature-after sun being round and moon being
Sleep, Black Bear, Sleep
Heidi and I actually wrote this as a companion book to YOU NEST HERE WITH ME which Harcourt bought speedily. But the editor didn’t want it as it seemed too close to their perennial bestseller TIME FOR BED by Mem Fox and-yes-Jane Dyer. So we sent it to Harper, to the marvelous Maria Modugno
Johnny Appleseed
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
Baby Bear’s Books
Baby Bear’s Books grew out of two things—first it was the follow up to the successful Baby Bear’s Chairs, both with delicious pictures by Melissa Sweet. And both books were expansions of poems that had been in my much earlier Three Bears Rhyme Book with Jane Dyer. In fact the poem “Read to
How Do Dinosaurs Learn Their Colors?
I worked on How Do Dinosaurs Counting and Colors at the same time, and as they are small so-called “novelty” books, they are different from the others. They are shorter and they don’t have the same rhyme schemes or cadences.
Troll Bridge
After my son Adam and I wrote Pay the Piper, our first Rock-and-Roll fairy tale, we turned our attention to this book, Troll Bridge. Piper had been set in the Massachusetts area where Adam had grown up, but Bridge is set in Minnesota where he has lived for the past twenty years or so. We were