1. You have a range of work, from picture books to longer chapter books. Do you have a particular favorite to work with?
My sweet spot has always been poetry and picture books (which are like poetry. Short, lyrical. condensed). But honestly, it's why picture books-- like OWL MOON and BEAR OUTSIDE especially speak to me. My newest book, ELEPHANTASTIC (illustrated by Brett Helquist) which has only 22 words, all puns using the word Elephant and using rhyme and off-rhyme, will probably end up on my favorite list, eventually. With the pictures, the words make perfect sense. That's today's answer-- looking back. Whatever day you ask me, it will be the story (possibly as yet unsold) that is shouting at me NOW!
2. What is your creative process like? Every day in the morning after breakfast, (sometimes even before) it's BIC --Butt In Chair time. See what HAS to get done (a poem a day, a speech for next week or month, a story half done, a novel in crises....) and I am glued to the chair. I am truly attached to being there, wrestling a story--sometimes an old one, sometimes a new one.
3. What draws you to write for young readers?
I kind of fell into it. I had been writing nonfiction pieces for newspapers and magazines, a lot of it about kites (my dad was International Kite Flying Champion--it's a long story), and I was tired of it. By accident, not design, I sold a nonfiction book about women pirates called PIRATES IN PETTICOATS, and a picture book in rhyme called SEE THIS LITTLE LINE to the same editor and realized I didn't know what I was doing.
So immediately (AFTER selling the books) I signed up for a course at the New School in NY City where I lived at the time. I learned enough to know that I had found my calling in life. I changed jobs, became an assistant editor in the children's books section of Knopf Books...and I was really off to the races after that!
4. Any message for teachers who are using your books in their instruction?
Read it to yourself first, then to the kids, and let them talk about it before you start poking at it. Then give them the clues you have found, and read it again for a second listen. You will be surprised at how much they will learn (and you will learn) between the two readings. After all, it had probably taken me a dozen or more rewritings to get it right.
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