Last week on Twitter, Madison Bailey shared some 3rd-graders’ leaf creations they made after reading A Leaf Can Be…! How awesome is that? My Can Be… books are all about seeing common things in new ways, and that’s exactly what they did. Some looked at the shapes of the leaves
As a writer, nothing makes me feel better than knowing that my words inspired someone else to do something: to write, to think differently, to take some kind of action (or even just to relax, to laugh, or to learn). Last month, I got the nicest letter from teacher Ashley
A couple of weeks ago, I posted about working on the opening to my next picture book. I still haven’t heard if the opening I submitted will fly or not, but I thought I’d follow up here and share a couple of openings written after the fact. A lot of
What did I do this summer? I spent three weeks with K‑5 summer school students in a local school district. It was the most intense visiting author program I’ve ever done. Three weeks, four sites, 1700 students. Whew! It was hard work and incredibly rewarding. I shared this process in
It’s been a feast of good news lately, and I’m incredibly grateful. I learned a couple of weeks ago that A Leaf Can Be… has been awarded the John Burroughs Riverby Award for excellent natural history books for young readers! You can see all five winning books here! I’ve eaten
Welcome to Nonfiction Monday! I’m sharing a piece of near-final?art from my forthcoming Water Can Be… (Millbrook Press, 2014) today. A while back, I shared a couple of wonderful sketches from the illustrator, Violeta Dabija. Recently, Carol Hinz, my super-smart Millbrook editor, sent along a piece of almost-final art to
Hi, guys–Happy New Year! It’s good to be back! There was a piece recently in Publishers Weekly about the cover of Steam Train, Dream Train, the follow-up to Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site. So much thought goes into figuring out book covers. For my next book with Millbrook Press, Water Can
My husband is the best. A box arrived Friday marked “Perishable.” Oh, that can only be good things. Turns out Randy ordered me cookies (cinnamon shortbread!) from Baking for Good, an online bakery that creates treats and donates some proceeds to the cause of your choice. So check out the
One of the most exciting (and, let’s be honest, scariest) things when you’re a picture book writer is for your editor to say, “I have sketches!” It’s that moment when you see how’someone you don’t know (usually) has envisioned the words you struggled with into a book. Will the artist
Cards are extra exciting for me since Lerner used art from my forthcoming book, A LEAF CAN BE…, for its holiday cards this year. They sent me a box to use for myself, so most of my people are getting a card with Violeta Dabija’s wonderful art on it!
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