Author of over 400 Books for Children and Adults
Creative Editions; Illustrated edition (August 18, 2020) Illustrated by Jori van der Linde ISBN-10: 1568463499 ISBN-13: 978-1568463490 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– …
Magination Press (November 2, 2021) with Maddison Stemple-Piatt Illustrated by Priscilla Burris ISBN-10: 143383684X ISBN-13: 978-1433836848 Written with my ten year old granddaughter, Maddison Stemple-Piatt, and sold ten plus years later. (She is now in law school!) And the publishing company who bought it–Magination Press–hadn’t been running yet in its current form. Both Maddison and …
Scholastic Press (September 28, 2021) Illustrated by Mark Teague ISBN-10: 1338363352 ISBN-13: 978-1338363357 Originally written when my editor Bonnie Verberg (who started the Dino-sty as I call it) was let go by Scholastic. It was to be the last book in a multi-million copy world-wide series of picture books. My granddaughter Maddison, then age 24 …
Crocodile Books (November 2, 2021) Illustrated by Kathryn Brown ISBN-10: 1623718651 ISBN-13: 978-1623718657 After the first book came out–Eeny Meeny Miney Mole from HAacourt, the company itself changed hands. Editors (including mine) left, and no one wanted the second book. But years later, (20 Years maybe?) it has found a new home. The two books …
So, David L. Harrison was posting on his personal web page about how when his son (now in his 60s I believe) was a boy, David had always promised to write him a story about a lonely tiger, but never did. And so I wrote back (also on David’s site) the beginning of the story set in India and after we had this open to the public several pages going on, I said: “Think it’s time to take this offline and really go for it.”
Bear Outside turned out to be my first ever book with the famed editor Neal Porter and my (accidentally) 400th book. It has an interesting backstory. About five years before I wrote and sold A BEAR OUTSIDE, I had been helping one of my editors find an illustrator for a different bear book of mine.
So the phone rings. My Charlesbridge editor said, “I have a book idea for you.” (This happens, but rarely.)
I said…”Okay.”
“In two years it’s going to be the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims landing on Plymouth Rock. Big celebrations and. . . ”
“It didn’t happen, you know,” I said, figuring she knew. She was a Harvard graduate after all.
“What didn’t happen?”
As I began writing the second Interrupting Cow book (likely to be six of them) about a chicken–a Rhode Island Red– and why it crosses the road (each one uses an old joke at its center…the next two are about an old dog learning new tricks and a horse of a different color) I realized that all of Cow’s new friends, her accidental herd if you will, are different colors and different kinds of animals. A virtual variety.
A new line of easy readers (the next up from my Fish School rhymed books, all for Simon & Schuster) are the INTERRUPTING COW books, This is the first, (2 and 3 are already written!) full of gag lines, puns. and each based on the interrupting cow plus…
Daughter Heidi Stemple and I were telephoned by the editor of a new early-reading imprint “Rises” for Penguin Random house. We knew her though had never actually done a book for her. Se told us about an idea and we ran with it, and it became this book…