Author of over 400 Books for Children and Adults
This is the story of Columbus’ landing in the Americas, as told by a boy of the Taino people who already lived there. The 500th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage was coming up, and my Harcourt editor of the time–Bonnie Ingber–suggested such a book was needed. I thought a Taino should write it.
Eeny and her sisters are moles, but the older two are conservative and nervous. Eeny is a young adventurer. Someone once described this book as “Beatrix Potter with a kink!” I’d tried writing this story in rhyme: “Once at the bottom of a deep, dark hole lived Eeny and Meeny and little Miney Mole.”
It took about eight months to track down the jump rope and ball bouncing and counting out rhymes for this picture book. Some I found in books and some I got from my husband’s international students and colleagues. I wanted the rhymes in both English and in their original or transliterated voices.
The first of four music books I did for Boyds Mills. Adam was wonderful to work with, shipping me off the simple arrangements which I then played on the piano. We figured if I could sight read them, ANYONE could! Many were Mother Goose songs I’d taught him when he was a child. I picked the songs, wrote the historical notes.
Chapbook for now defunct Pulphouse Publishing of the short story that was first published in Merlin’s Booke and later was fleshed out into Sword of the Rightful King.
Movie version of Merlin and the Dragons.
I had lived in the Connecticut River Valley for a number of years, and had known (and visited) that lovely created wilderness, the Quabbin Reservoir. But I hadn’t known the human story behind it until the local newspaper did an article. It seems that in the late ’30s, the people of the Swift River Valley towns had sold
I was asked to write a storybook about the mythical flight of Daedelus and Icarus for illustrator Susan Gallagher (also known as S. Selig.) But once I’d actually told the story and the book was accepted, she was no longer interested in the project. She later illustrated the book of adult poems Nancy Willard and I did
This mammoth collection of stories, songs, poems–and information–about Christmas is defined by its brilliant dePaola pictures. I think it is among the best work Tomie has ever done! Adam and I wrote two new Christmas songs for the book and he arranged a number of popular Christmas carols as well.
This is based on something that actually happened when my father came home wounded from World War II. My mother, baby brother, and I lived with her parents for two and a half years (see also the book MIZ BERLIN WALKS and the short story “The Long Closet.”) When my father returned from London