The Tassy Walden New Voices in Children’s Literature Awards ceremony is a stellar event. I mean it, this hard-earned recognition for a writer is a moment when the clouds clear and the stars shine and shimmer not on everyone, or that one, but on you. I was a finalist, and after a friend suggested I [...]

I loved poetry as a child. My father read us picture books written in rhyme; my siblings and I read to each other Hilaire Bellock’s The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts and Cautionary Tales for Children; and we studied Struwwelpeter to keep us appalled. But the poetry books I kept coming back to were A.A. [...]

When we decided to take photographs of our desks, I thought, Oh no. I don’t have a desk. At least, none of my own. See? That’s the computer I share with three other people. Now, I get to use it more than the other three, but I’m booted off with regularity. And you notice all [...]

‘Tis the season for lists. So, in this spirit I offer you one of my own: Read-aloud books that fit the season. These are books that our family has read to each other over the years and have been perennial pleasers. This isn’t a comprehensive list of books for the season, not even the best [...]

When my kids were small, and each evening required several bedtime stories, a perennial favorite was Steven Kellog’s Sally Ann Thunder Ann Whirlwind Crockett. She could outrun, out swim, out arm wrestle, out tug-o-war any man in creation. She chopped trees with her teeth, tamed eagles, skinned bears, whipped up tornadoes, and out wrestled the [...]

Foul language, to be precise. I write for children, so I stay clear of all those Bad Words. You know, the ones George Carlin used for a whole comedy routine. Plus many more. But the thing is, despite our desire to keep those Bad Words out of sight and sound, kids see them, hear them [...]