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Add this book to your collection: Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night by Joyce Sidman

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©2011 The Childrens Book Review. All Rights Reserved.

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: September 20, 2011

David Teague

David Teague lives in Wilmington, Delaware, with his wife, the novelist Marisa de los Santos, and their two children, Charles and Annabel.  David teaches literature at the University of Delaware.  “Franklin’s Big Dreams,” is his first picture book, based on dreams he had when he was little but didn’t quite figure out until he wrote “Franklin.”  Next up for David is “Billy Hightower,” a picture book about a boy who lives on top of the highest building in the world, so high that when it rains on everybody else it doesn’t rain on him.

Nicki Richesin: What first drew you to writing books for children?

David Teague: I used to write books for adults.  Probably ten of them, all unpublished, and rightfully so.  Big, weighty, serious, books about what I thought were big, weighty, serious subjects, like good versus evil and the meaning of life, man’s inhumanity toward man, and all that.  And boy were they boring.  But when I began to tell stories to my children, back when they were younger, I noticed that my storytelling was a LOT more fun—for me and for my audience.  So I learned to let my imagination loose, to think more like a child, and my stories turned out much better after that.

In your book, FRANKLIN’S BIG DREAMS, every night a construction crew bursts through Franklin’s bedroom wall and builds train tracks, a canal and a runway. Did you have a similar experience as a child, a recurring dream that you could direct the way you wanted?

When I was little, I DID dream about railroad tracks running past my bed (I still do sometimes–also about highways and runways and ship channels).

I think maybe the dreams started because, when I was little, as I was trying to fall asleep, which I often had trouble doing, I could hear trains rumbling out of a tunnel in the distance, and hear them blowing their horns as they passed through the town not far from where I lived.  It was a nice feeling to lie in bed and think about people out there moving through the night, all going to their separate places.

And I think what I had in my mind as I was falling asleep managed to sneak into my dreams.

Illustration by Boris Kulikov

So a railroad got into my dreams, and in my dreams, after the trains thundered past, I always noticed the tracks curving around from behind my headboard and leading beside my bed and thence out again through the back wall of my bedroom.  They were seriously not mor

Add this book to your collection: Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site

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©2011 The Childrens Book Review. All Rights Reserved.

By Bethanie Deeney Murguia, for The Children’s Book Review
Published: May 18, 2011

When I was seven, I moved into a home that was over 150 years old. It was filled with trap doors, secret spaces and stairs that led nowhere. I had visions of days gone by—horse carriages, ball gowns and hidden treasure. For years, I tried to persuade my parents to pry up the wood floor where it had an obvious and suspicious hatch. (No luck.) Behind the house were woods that stretched across acres to an apple orchard. We had playhouses and treehouses and mountains of snow in the winter. I don’t know if the house and landscape created my imagination or just fueled it, but I vividly remember the joy of being lost in daydreams and creating imaginary worlds and stories at that age.

I still love to get lost in my imagination. I keep a “seed” notebook of things that strike my fancy: situations, words, phrases, quirky behaviors and so forth. Sometimes I do quick sketches. These days, most of my inspiration comes from adventures with my daughters and my dog. A few years ago, I wrote the phrase “messy sleeper” in my notebook after observing the very different sleeping habits in our house.

Some time later, I was struck by the contrast between my newborn who slept so peacefully and my 3-year-old who thrashed from one end of her bed to the other. I remembered the “messy sleeping” note. I decided that my 3-year-old must be having big dreams. I thought about dreams and the visual possibilities—what fun it would be to have the character’s sleeping position mimic the action in the dream. I could also use the dreams to give insight into the character’s personality.

I started to think about the protagonist. I had the image of a swaddled newborn in mind, but a human character felt too literal. The story required a certain amount of whimsy. My own little newborn—wrapped in a blanket and topped off with a hat—looked like a bug. I sketched some bugs and soon, the Buglette character came to life.

After many months of revising, sketching, painting and waiting (so much waiting!), my idea is finally a book. I have always been drawn to stories that celebrate unusual characters and imaginative inner worlds. I hope BUGLETTE fits that bill.

Add this book to your collection: Buglette, the Messy Sleeper by Bethanie Murguia

About the author: BETHANIE DEENEY MURGUIA graduated summa cum laude from the University of Rochester, where she studied psychology and fine art. She received an MFA in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts in New York. While in New York, she was an art director for Hearst Magazines. Bethanie lives in Sausalito, California, with her husband and two little buglettes of her own.