• Write a Comment
• Related Blog Posts
• Share on Twitter
• Share on Facebook

When I was about three or four, I dreamed I could read. It was a recurring dream: turning page after page and reading all the words. But when I woke up, I could no longer read. Finally, in the first grade, in spite of the infamous red, blue and yellow Dick and Jane readers, I learned to read!

Books were a part of life in my family. My parents read bedtime stories to me and my brother every night. The table by my father's red armchair always held a stack of books with torn paper markers in various places. He read history, economics, novels, paperback mysteries with thrilling, lurid covers. He also read Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and Pogo comic books which he bought as soon as they hit the newsstand and which he allowed us to read only after he was finished.

My brother and I were given books on birthdays, at Christmas, when we were sick . . . I saved them all, eventually shelved them alphabetically, catalogued them, loaned them to my friends and charged fines when they were overdue. Much of my early childhood was spent slouched in an armchair or up in a tree house with my nose in a book . . . A good early education for a writer!

My parents didn't buy a television until I was eleven or twelve. We were allowed to watch an hour and a half a week, so we selected our shows carefully. I discovered, thanks to my father's enthusiasms: Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello, the Marx brothers, Jackie Gleason and Art Carney, and British films, like the Lavender Hill Mob - all wonderful slapstick humor. In retrospect, I'm sure these shows have had some influence on my picture books.

I wasn't much interested in writing until I had a dynamic and demanding English teacher in the eighth grade and another in high school. I wrote many stories for our high school magazine and planned to major in English in college. But freshman English was so tedious, that I lost all enthusiasm for that idea. Instead, I took art history and some drawing and design courses-a pre-architecture major intended to lead to three years of graduate work in architecture. But, my senior year, I discovered photography!

My first years out of college, in Philadelphia, in the late 1960s, I photographed buildings for architects, and did photo essays for small magazines on urban life: skid row, Chinatown, inner city schools, political demonstrations . . . . While I was photographing, I was also looking at children's picture books in bookstores and at the library. I read picture books to any neighborhood child who wanted to listen. I started experimenting with my own stories, illustrating them with photographs or drawings. And, during that same time, I met and married my husband, Ahren.

By the mid seventies, Ahren and I were living in Berkeley, California with a child of our own, Heather. She and I went to the library once or twice a week and borrowed piles of books to read at bedtime, nap time, and times in between. I decided, once again that I was going to try writing and illustrating picture books. I started with an alphabet book, thinking it would take a few weeks. Two years later, I reached Z , having taught myself something about illustration and about the complexities of writing a "simple little picture book."

Unfortunately, no one wanted to publish my alphabet book. But I got encouragement from editors who told me to write and illustrate a story and then come back to see them. So, while earning my living as a photographer and graphic designer, I continued to experiment with picture books. One job I had was to design and illustrate a poster about animal camouflage for a science museum. The poster gave me the idea for what became my first published book, Henry and the Red Stripes.

In 1981, I sold my first two books and we moved to Vermont. Many years and many books later, picture books are still an exciting challenge. I have file folders filled with ideas for new stories: clippings from newspapers, stories heard on the radio, family stories, childhood memories, conversations overheard, nursery rhymes, all waiting for me to find their beginnings, middles, and ends and to bring them alive in the space of a thirty-two page picture book.

When I was about three or four, I dreamed I could read. It was a recurring dream: turning page after page and reading all the words. But when I woke up, I could no longer read. Finally, in the first grade, in spite of the infamous red, blue and yellow Dick and Jane readers, I learned to read! Books were a part of life in my family. My parents read bedtime stories to me and my brother every night.... More