Young people - Have a taste of the Peace Corps experience

In the 1960's Senator John F. Kennedy challenged young people to make a difference in the world. The Peace Corps grew out of his challenge and since then "more than 195,000 Peace Corps Volunteers have served in 139 host countries to work on issues ranging from AIDS education to information technology and environmental preservation."

To give young people a taste for what it is like to be a Peace Corps volunteer the Peace Corps has set up a Peace Corps Challenge website where children can get a feel for what it is like to volunteer in a village in a foreign country. This online game is both entertaining and highly educational. Players will have to deal with water, health, infrastructure, and education problems. Teachers might like to use this invaluable tool in their classrooms to show their students that it is vital that we all do what we can to help people who are less fortunate than we are. Online classroom materials are available to teachers who want to participate.

Meet Elise Broach, author of Masterpiece

Not long ago I read and reviewed Masterpiece by Elise Broach. It is a terrific book for young readers and you can read my review here. I was so impressed by the book that I decided that I wanted to talk to the author. Here is an interview that I had with her:

1. How did you get the idea for Masterpiece?
I actually started Masterpiece in the 1980s, when I was a graduate student in the history Ph.D. program at Yale, living in an apartment in New Haven. Late at night, I accidentally dropped one of my contact lenses down the bathroom sink. I spent over an hour trying to fish it out, and I kept fantasizing about how great it would be to have some tiny creature capable of going down the drain and retrieving it for me. I finally found the contact, and then, after midnight, sat down at my desk and wrote the first three chapters of the story. I didn't return to it for over twenty years!

2. In Masterpiece one of the main characters is a beetle. Why did you choose this particular animal?
I like beetles. There are so many different kinds. They're small and fairly harmless, you see them everywhere, and they don't have the scary associations of insects that sting or bite. Plus, they're exremely resourceful and hardy, and they can live inside houses without being part of an infestation. Really, a beetle was the perfect insect for the purposes of the story!

3. Do you have an interest in/fondness for art?
I've always been interested in art. When I was little, I loved to draw and paint. In college, I took lots of art history classes. Now, as an adult, one of my favorite things to do is visiting art museums with my family or friends.

4. Is Durer one of your favorite artists, and if not why did you pick his work to be at the center of Masterpiece?
I knew Durer's work from my art history classes, but he wasn't one of my favorite artists until I spent so much time thinking about him while writing Masterpiece. For the plot to work, I needed an artist whose drawings were almost magically detailed and tiny, so delicate they could plausibly have been created by a beetle. Durer was an expert at pen-and-ink drawings, had completed several miniatures, and was renowned for the incredible level of detail in his work. In personality, he was melancholy and had quite a sad life, but was beloved by his friends and very generous to them, so he seemed a good fit for the story that way too.

5. James is a rather lonely little boy. Is his loneliness something you identify with?
I'm not sure I identify with his loneliness as much as sympathize with it. I've known so many people like James, who stand off to the side of things and never quite get the attention they deserve, who are great observers of life but not necessarily full participants in it. James is exactly the kind of child who would notice Marvin, and whose life would be most changed by a friendship with him.

6. On your website you say that you identify with Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice. In what way?
Oh, I'm not sure that's very original! Anyone who has read that wonderful book probably most identifies with the character of Elizabeth. I guess apart from superficial things, like the fact that I love to read and am interested in other people's lives, I'd say that, like Elizabeth, I am pretty opinionated and independent, but never take myself too seriously.

7. Which do you prefer, writing a picture book or a novel?
They're very different experiences. A picture book is more immediately satisfying, because I can usually write the first draft in one sitting. It may take months and months of noodling to get it right, but it's very rewarding to finish a story in a few hours: to see the whole thing, complete, on paper. By contrast, a novel is a Herculean labor at some level, at least for me. There's always a point at which I wonder if I can pull it off (usually right in the middle!). But when I finish a novel, and have peopled an entire world and watched it change and deepen over time--and even surprise me--that is tremendously fulfilling.

8. Do you read a lot of children’s literature?
Yes! All the time. I love to read. It used to be my guilty pleasure, but now that I write for a living, I can convince myself it's justified.

9. Where do you write and do you have a schedule for writing?
I usually write in an alcove of my bedroom, in front of a window overlooking the woods. My desk is an old library table, with all of my favorite children's books on the shelf at my knees. But I also write in coffeeshops, libraries, while I'm waiting in the car to pick up my kids from some activity or other. When you have a busy life, you have to fit it in wherever possible. I don't have a schedule for writing, and certainly don't write every day. I tend to work very hard in spurts, and then need a lot of thinking time in between.

10. If you were to write a work of historical fiction which period in history would it be based in?
That is a very interesting question. I think it would be really hard for me to write historical fiction, even though I have a background in history... or maybe BECAUSE I have a background in history. I'd be so concerned about getting every single detail right--what wood were the floors made of then? What did people eat for breakfast and how did it vary by social class?--that I'm afraid it would be crippling to the story. But there are so many periods in history that fascinate me. I love Elizabethan England, which played such a big part in my first novel, Shakespeare's Secret.

To find out more about Elise please visit her website.

The New Issue of Through the Looking Glass Book Review is online

Good morning everyone. I just wanted to let you know that the new issue of Through the Looking Glass Book Review is now online. This month, because of the holiday season, I decided to do something different. Rather than have my ususal Special Feature I reviewed books in the various different genres that I thought would make great gifts for the holidays. There are board books, pop-up books, craft kits, picture books, books for young readers and books for teens - all of which would make a great gift for someone.

Of course there are lots of Christmas titles as well. I always have a bit of a struggle choosing the ones I like best. Then I find myself reviewing late into the night to get them all done in time - because there are so many of them! Though most of the Christmas titles are picture books there are some like Grimble at Christmas and The Dog who thought he was Santa that are for older readers.

In addition there are some wonderful Hanukkah stories to enjoy as well.

As usual I have the monthly Bookish Calendar full of links to interesting books of all kinds. Here you will find books about Ludwig van Beethoven, Rosa Parks, and much more.

For this December issue I chose a deliciously funny teen vampire book as my Editor's Choice of the month. Sucks to be me: The All-True Confessions of Mina Hamilton, Teen Vampire (maybe) by Kimberly Pauley would make a great gift for a teen who has an appreciation for vampire tales. You can see my interview with the author of this entertaining book on the November 13th, 2008 blog entry.

I hope you enjoy this new issue and that you are able to use it to buy lots of splendid books!

Barefoot Books invites you to bring books to Africa

Barefoot Books brings Books to Africa

Multi-cultural children’s book publisher Barefoot Books and non-profit Books For Africa (BFA) are embarking on an innovative partnership to bring Barefoot Books into the hands of children in classrooms and libraries across Africa. Since 1988, BFA has shipped more than 20 million books to 44 African countries and, with growing awareness of their organization and cause, plans to ship millions more in the coming years. To help BFA achieve their goal this holiday season, Barefoot is offering its community the opportunity to purchase an African-themed title online at a dramatically reduced price which will be sent to a child in Africa. Six titles are available, including We All Went on Safari: A Counting Journey Through Tanzania and Mama Panya’s Pancakes: A Village Tale from Kenya.
Additionally, Barefoot is calling on their grassroots network of home-sellers to support BFA’s mission, by selling beautiful African bookmarks for $1 a piece, with proceeds going towards shipping costs for the books.

Barefoot Books CEO Nancy Traversy says, “Barefoot is always looking to find like-minded partners who are making a difference in the lives of children all over the world. We are so excited to be working with Books for Africa and the entire Barefoot community to help bring books to the African children who so need them.”

“The beautiful books provided by Barefoot Books, which feature African themes, will be very exciting for our recipients in Africa to read,” says Books For Africa Executive Director Patrick Plonski. “We really appreciate this partnership with Barefoot Books which will provide high-quality books for us to send to children in Africa, and will also provide funds to help ship these books.”

Barefoot Books is launching the Books for Africa campaign this holiday season and promoting it through 2009.

About Barefoot Books Barefoot Books is an international children's publisher dedicated to creating award-winning, beautiful books which celebrate imagination, diversity and creativity. Our pioneering and innovative business model wholeheartedly embraces today's social networking opportunities and focuses on establishing grassroots, viral communities with a global reach. Our audience is central to our business philosophy as is our willingness to redefine and reinvent the way in which stories and children come together. Find out more at http://www.barefootbooks.com/.

CONTACT: Jeanne Nicholson, jeanne.nicholson@barefootbooks.com; (617) 995-4640

About Books for Africa
Books For Africa collects, sorts, ships and distributes books to children in Africa. Our goal: to end the book famine in Africa. Books donated by publishers, schools, libraries, individuals and organizations are sorted and packed by volunteers who carefully choose books that are age and subject appropriate. They are shipped in containers paid for by contributions from people like you. They are on once-empty library shelves, in classrooms in rural schools, and in the hands of children who have never held a book before. Each book will be read over and over and over again. When the books arrive, they go to those who need them most: children who are hungry to read, hungry to learn, hungry to explore the world in ways that only books make possible. Find out more at http://www.booksforafrica.org/

CONTACT: Patrick Plonski, Executive Director, patrick@booksforafrica.org; phone: 651-291-2713

An Interview with Patrick McDonnell - Author of "South"

I'd like to introduce you to Patrick McDonnell. Patrick is the creator of the comic strip Mutts and his characters, Earl the dog and Mooch the cat have delighted people of all ages all over the world. In addition to drawing the strip, Patrick has created several wonderful books including Art and The Gift of Nothing. His new book, South would make a wonderful gift for almost anyone this holiday season.

Here is an interview that I had with Patrick:

1. Where did the idea for Mutts come from?
I had wanted to be a cartoonist since I was a child. But when I graduated from the School of Visual Arts I started my career as a magazine illustrator. One of my favorite ‘characters’ in my illustrations was a little white dog. That dog and his guardian eventually evolved into Earl and his Ozzie in Mutts. Overall, I’d say that MUTTS is about my love for animals and for the art of cartooning.

2. Did you base the characters of Mooch and Earl on animals you knew?
Earl is based on my first dog Earl. Earl and I spent almost 19 years together. In fact, Earl is the star of WAG!, my next children’s book, which will be coming out in Fall 2009. Mooch’s personality is a combination of all the cats I’ve known throughout my life, and my cat MeeMow is a source of a lot of Mooch material.

3. How did you come up with Mooch’s wonderful way of speaking?
Comics have a long history of characters having funny speech patterns (like Popeye, for example). So when I started MUTTS, I knew that I wanted at least one of my characters to pay homage to that tradition. A friend of a friend would say Yesh on occasion, and I thought it would be funny if Mooch adopted that word. But things got out of hand, and soon Mooch was also saying shmaybe. Before long, Mooch was shhhing all over the place.

4. You use your MUTTS strips and characters to make people aware of the plight of homeless dogs and cats. Have you always cared about this cause?
I have always had a love and deep concern for animals. But doing a daily strip that centers on viewing the world through their eyes made me more aware of how tough they have it in this world. After my becoming a member of the HSUS Board of Directors, I became acutely aware of the issues.

5. Aside from donating money to shelters, adopting a pet from a shelter, and spaying or neutering their pets, what do you think people can do to help homeless animals?
Well, these three things are a great start to ending the problem of homeless pets. Other things we can do are volunteering at the shelter (maybe simply by walking the dogs or playing with the cats), donating blankets or other items such as toys and food, and by telling your friends to not buy a new companion animal from a pet store. 99% of dogs sold in pet stores come from puppy mills.

6. In your children’s books you focus on simple yet incredibly important themes such as friendship. When you start creating a book do you know ahead of time what the theme of the book is going to be, or does the inspiration come to you when you put pencil to paper?
When I write my books I usually have a vague idea for a story in mind. When I put pencil to paper I then try to get out of the way and let the story tell itself. In a way, I feel it’s a form of meditation.

7. When you are drawing are you like your character Art (from your book “Art”) in that your imagination takes over?
ART is definitely autobiographical. Making art is a form of play for me and something I love to do.

8. What were you trying to tell people when you wrote your book “The Gift of Nothing?”
Some of the most important things in our lives are the small, everyday moments when we are simply present. Just being together with family and enjoying the time spent with them. The gift of life is all around us, and this book celebrates that gift.

9. When you started to draw the Mutts strips did you ever think that you would be creating stand-alone books one day?
Like comic strips, children’s books tell a story using words and pictures. As such, I’ve always had a fascination for them, and felt I would someday create a picture book. The daily MUTTS comic strip, however, consumed almost all my time for a long time. When I was able to make some space in my schedule, doing children’s books became a priority. I really enjoy this medium.

10. I believe that your books are suitable to readers of all ages. Was it your intention to create stories that are ageless or did this just happen by chance?
That’s so nice of you to feel that way about my books. Since the MUTTS comic strip is geared for all ages, I guess my children’s books have a similar ‘appeal’. Our sense of childhood wonder never leaves us if we open to that possibility.

You can find out more about Patrick and Mutts on Patrick's website.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I just wanted to take this opportunity to wish you all a

Best wishes,

Marya

An interview with Matthew Price - Author and Publisher

I'd like to introduce you to Matthew Price, a children's book author and publisher. Recently his publishing house, Matthew Price Limited, set up an office in the United States and several Matthew Price books are already available. Curious to learn more about Matthew and his work, I interviewed him.


What prompted you to set up a publishing house here in the United States?
Our children had gone through high school in the States and didn't want to come home! What choice? We had to move and move we did with absolutely everything.

Is the publishing world in the United States very different from the one in the U.K.?
Yes and no. The principles are the same, the taste is different in some ways. How do you decide which books to publish? Mostly gut instinct as a father, but also as a former children's book editor, and as a former children book buyer.It is unusual for a publisher to also be a writer.

Do you think that your experiences as a writer make you a better publisher? Yes, in some ways, it's very inconvenient in others! The compulsion to write gets in the way of being an efficient manager. On the other hand, it makes me much more empathetic to what writers and artists go through. The number one complaint from authors is that publishers don't communicate enough with them. As an author myself I view the editorial and publishing process with an authors eye. I am gentle with my editorial comments, and keep the author informed during all phases of production and marketing. That allows us to have wonderful, long term relationships with our authors.

Your company motto is "Education through delight" and you have produced several books for young children that fit this bill. Do you think you will publish books for older children too?
It's possible, but I want to get the younger books established first. This is our area of strength.

What do you think we need to do to make sure the unhappy economy does not have a dire effect on the children's book industry?
Traditionally children's books have not suffered as much as adult books in a recession. None of us is recession-proof but all we can do is try and publish only those books that we believe in wholeheartedly. That is what we should do all the time anyway, so maybe this difficult time will help us to concentrate our minds!

I have read that you "grew up in a bookshop." Where was this, and what was it like?
What I meant by this is that I grew up in the book trade in a bookshop. My first job was in Dillon's University Bookshop in London and I spent five years there, ending up as the children's book buyer. It came to be the basis for all my editorial instincts. As an experience for a publisher, it was invaluable. When I got my first job in a large publisher and we would discuss a book, I would sometimes say: "Well, I couldn't have sold it in the bookshop," and people would glare at me, because in England it was very unusual to go straight from a bookshop into an editorial job and they had not had this experience.

Do you have plans to write another book?
Yes. What will it be? I honestly don't know. I have foresworn writing many times but it always seems to come back and get me.What do you like most about being a publisher? I have to confess, I love the whole business. I love working with authors and artists. I love working with other publishers. I love working with reps, librarians, booksellers, the professionals of the book trade. We have very strong international links and I love to discover people all over the world who love the same things I do. I even love the wheeling and dealing.What do you like most about being a writer? I love to put something new where there was nothing before. I think what I mean by this is that I love to create something original.


Take a look at my review of Matthew's Book, Room for one more.

An interview with Keith Szafranski

Keith Szafranski is the author of a wonderful new series of picture books starring Barrington, a bear who loves to travel and who takes photographs of the things he sees. You can read my review of the first Barrington book, Barrington visits the Emperor on the Through the Looking Glass Book Review website.

This is what Keith had to say about his books and his work:

Where did you get the idea for your Barrington Bear stories?
About 2 1/2 years ago an artist friend of mine suggested I use my photographs to do a children's picture book. She had recently come out with one using her artwork and was doing very well with it selling them at the various
art shows she did around the country. The idea intrigued me but is was almost two years before I came up with an idea that I liked. One day, in April 2007, my wife and I were walking the dog and this idea of having some sort of stuffed critter take my place on all of my travels came to me literally out of nowhere. I really liked the idea and started working out some of the details. Less than a year later the first Travels With Barrington Bear book was released.

Is he your bear and where did his name come from?
Yes, Barrington is my creation. I designed and sewed Barrington and all of his clothes. I really did not want a bear at first because so many people used bears in their stories. But eventually I succumbed and Barrington was 'born.' When it came time to name my bear I went to babynames.com. At first Barrington was going to be a photographer just like me. I wanted his name to go with either 'bear' or 'photographer' so I looked through boys names under 'b', 'f' and 'ph'. I listed about 60 names I liked and then started the process of elimination. I soon decided against having Barrington be a photographer as such and just have him be a bear that liked to take photographs. That eliminated all of the 'f' and 'ph' names and just left the 'b's'. I then started going through the list again, checking online to see if anyone else had used a particular name for a bear. I always passed over 'Barrington' because I really liked it and eventually quit the elimination process and went with Barrington.

How did you incorporate the image of Barrington into your photos so well?
Each of the first two books has only one image where Barrington was actually in the shot as taken. In all of the rest I used Photoshop to place him in the image. This is the most fun aspect of doing these books for me. Like most Photoshop
skills that I possess, adding Barrington to a scene so it looks like he is really there just took practice. I learned as I went along. I do everything pretty much by 'hand'. I know there are faster and perhaps easier ways to incorporate the little bear into the original photos but I don't think they work as well. I even draw Barrington's shadow like the one on the cover of Emperor by hand.

Clearly you went to see the Penguins in the Antarctic. What was it like?
I have been to Antarctica twice. Once was pretty much just for the Emperor penguins. That's the trip the first story is based on. The other time was for several species of penguin as well as seals, albatross and many other birds and animals. It's a gross understatement to say that Antarctica is an amazing place, especially the penguins. The Emperors see very few people during the year and so are quite 'tame'. While we as tourists are not allowed to approach the birds closer than 15 feet, it is okay for the penguins to come closer to us and they often do. I had literally thousands of penguins going about their daily routine of eating, sleeping, preening and taking care of their young within arms length. I hope I can see them again someday.

You have written one more book about Barrington's adventures. Do you have plans for many more?
After I first came up with the idea of Barrington, I quickly wrote down about ten book titles for the series and have since added two or three more that came to mind. I could probably go on ad infinitum with the series but will most likely limit the total to somewhere between twelve to fifteen books. Assuming they sell well enough that is. I have already begun work on book three in the series, Barrington Bear's Yellowstone Adventure.

When you are not writing about Barrington you are a professional photographer. How did you get interested in this field?
Well, to tell you the truth, the traveling actually came first. I always like to travel and see new places, especially the mountains. My wife and I took the kids out west a few times while we were living in Wisconsin. I was usually unhappy
with the photographs that I returned with from these trips. I was using an inexpensive instamatic camera at the time. Then, in 1979, a few months before a vacation to Arizona I decided to buy an inexpensive 35mm camera. It was almost love at first click. I really enjoyed the control I now had over my photographs. I practiced all the time. Four years after picking up the 35mm for the first time my wife and I quit our jobs and moved to Montana so I could pursue a career in wildlife photography.

What are you trying to do with your Barrington Bear books besides giving your readers something to smile and laugh at?
I really want to teach the reader something about the world around them. Not just information about places and animals but also the seemingly unimportant things like how you get from Montana to Antarctica. I want to do this in a fun
way so the kids (no matter what age) will not realize they are actually learning something along the way. I try to make my stories as true to life as possible with a little whimsy thrown in. Most of the things that happen to Barrington on his travels really happened to me. Of course, I didn't get to dance with penguins. There are some advantages to being a bear!

Please visit Keith and Barrington at the Barrington Bear Website.

Interview with Jackie Morris illustrator

I'd like you to meet Jackie Morris, the talented artist who illustrated a beautiful fairy tale called Singing to the sun.

What did you think when you were first sent the text for Singing to the Sun?
I first heard the story of Singing to the Sun at a children’s book festival in Swansea. Viv was doing an evening event and I went along to listen. The story made pictures dance in my head, and after the event Viv asked me if I liked it. When I said yes she replied “Good, because I wrote it with you in mind.’ And from there we began to look for a publisher together. The story was originaly published in a collection of stories and the others in the collection are equally beautiful.

What do you think of the message that it imparts to young, and not so young, readers?
There are so many messages in the book if you want to look for them. For children one message is that maybe love is better than wealth and power, but it is a thing to be freely given. For fathers a reminder that daughters have free will and are fed up of being given away as prizes in stories. For parents the message can be that arguing is frightening for children, for women, that it is always a good idea to keep your wolves close, if you have a wolf, and that cats are smart and music can often have the answer.

The artwork that you created for the story has a magical, ethereal quality. What inspired you to create these pictures in this way?

I love medieval manuscript, textiles, animals and birds. I suppose really the words inspired the images. Each book that I do is different, each a response to a different text

How were the illustrations created?
The illustrations were created with watercolour on hot pressed paper, after 27 years of practice and much blood sweat and tears. Firstly I did small thumbnail drawings and sketches trying to catch the characters, then went on to the finished work, which is larger than the published work. Some pieces flowed easily, others I had to work on a few times. I loved the wolves who are very much a side issue in the text, so I brought them down from the golden mountains to be beside the princesses, ready for when the princes get the answer wrong.

This is not the first fairy-tale that you have illustrated. Do you have a fondness for this genre?
I have a fondness for story. I love listening to storytellers. I love the way a really good story can live in your heart and mind and grow with you and help to make sense of the mad world we live in.

What do you think fairytales give children?
Hope. Understanding. Courage. Insight. Pleasure. Passion.Music. A connection through history to all the people in the world who have ever told the story before, who have ever listened to it. A place in the world and in time.

Did you like to read when you were a child, and if so what did you like to read?
I struggled to read when I was a child and only persisted because I knew that what was hidden in books behind the code of the alphabet was worth knowing, worth breaking through to. What I love to read now is stories that have magic, not necessarily witches and wizards, but that magical power where an author can make you believe, make you care, for a character whose bones are paper, whose blood is he letters on a page. Discoveries this last coupe of years have been Robin Hobb and The Book Thief and Stardust. Two of my favorite books I read as a child were White Fang and The Call of the Wild.

You have created illustrations for many charitable organizations. What do you like about doing this kind of work?
I like to use the work I do for good. I do not want to advertise cars, do illustrations for banks and big business. I always felt very priveleged to be able to work for Amnesty International and Green Peace and Oxfam.

You often use one of your cats as a model for your paintings. What does he think of this?
Max is a private kind of cat who likes to sleep in cupboards. He does not often come to sit on a lap and tends t keep out of the limelight, unlike the ginger brethren who dominate the house. But I think he is secretly quite pleased. He is very handsome and dark like midnight with emerald eyes.

If you could travel anywhere in the world to paint where would you go and why?
I would go to Venice in Spring. The colours of the buildings, the madness of the waterfilled streets, the crumbling decay are all inspiring. I would go to the arctic where the colours play in the sky and on the land and I would wait and watch for polar bears. I would go to Bhutan or Nepal and sit quietly and watch cranes fly over high mountains and hope a snowleopard would be watching me. I would go beneath the sea where great whales sing and see them swim and leap from the water, before it is too late, before there are no more and I would go to a jungle in India and wait for a tiger to burn the emerald forest bright. And for now I will go to my studio and paint some more.

You can find out more about Jackie on her wonderful website. If you are a cat lover do take the time to visit the blog written by her cat companions. Her journal will show you what the life of an illustrator is like.

Diane Z. Shore Blog Book Tour - Day Three

Today I will be interviewing Diane Z. Shore:


What made you want to write about this topic?
It was at an SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators )fall conference back in 1998, where a panel consisting of a librarian, an editor and an agent all expressed the need for more Thanksgiving books. I really like the Thanksgiving holiday, but wouldn’t say I was gung ho about writing a book about it. A year later, I was checking out books at our local library and one of the books I checked out was titled This Is the Pumpkin, a contemporary story about Halloween, written in a variation of cumulative rhyming verse. I thought that this format could work for a contemporary story about Thanksgiving and started out writing This Is the Turkey. That story was going nowhere, so I thought why not write about the First Thanksgiving using the same cumulative rhyme format, and calling the book THIS IS THE FEAST. FEAST was the first book I sold, back in Nov. of 2000, but because of editor and illustrator changes it has taken eight years to come out! ( I sold three books after FEAST which came out before FEAST was published.)

Did you do a lot of research before you began to write?
Yes, definitely! For This Is the Feast, I checked out every book I could find on the First Thanksgiving, both adult and children’s. A couple of the Pilgrims kept diaries so I had primary sources, too! I found the research to be very interesting and exciting, or as I tell the students when I visit schools, “very wowing!” I discovered I really loved non-fiction, and thought about other historical events that might work written in the cumulative rhyme format, and that’s when I came up with THIS IS THE DREAM. That book actually started out as THIS IS THE MARCH, about the 1968 march on Washington D.C., but decided that was too narrow an approach, so I expanded it to the entire Civil Rights Movement. For research I watched videos and read lots of books. Most of the research material for DREAM was primary sources For THIS IS THE GAME, which comes out in 2010, and is about the history of baseball, I watched Ken Burn’s nine-part documentary on baseball and read lots of adult non-fiction books. For THIS IS THE EARTH, (publication date pending) I read lots of newspaper articles as well as books on the environment. The next book I’d like to write is THIS IS THE FLAG.

The rhymes in your book flow beautifully from page to page. How did you achieve this?
Thank you! Lots and lots of practice. Like I tell the kids when I visit schools, writing is like playing a musical instrument or playing a sport. The more you practice, the better you get at it. You should read some of my earlier poetry, you would cringe! But I would guess that Cal Ripkin and Derek Jeter didn’t start out hitting home runs when they started playing baseball.

Do you have a fixed writing schedule that you follow?
Not anymore. Before I was published I used to get up in the wee hours of the morning (before the cat was awake!) to write. That’s when everything is fresh in my mind. Nowadays, I spend most of my time traveling, visiting schools with my A-Rockin’ and A-Readin’ program. I love to talk to the kids and inspire them to read. Now I only write during the summer.

Some people have the mistaken impression that writing in rhyme is easy. What kinds of problems do you face when you are writing in verse?
It may be easy for others but not for me! I think the hardest part about writing a poem is getting the meter or rhythm right. I actually started writing poetry by changing the words to nursery rhymes. When you use an existing rhythm, you have a pattern to follow. Then I bought a rhyming dictionary which helped explain different meters.

So far you have mostly written picture books, early readers, and articles. Is there a genre that you would really like to try some day, and if so why?
I love to write for children. I think I’m going to stick with that.


What kinds of books did you like to read when you were a child?
I loved Dr. Suess and Amelia Bedelia. I loved the page in Amelia Bedelia where Mrs. Rogers told her to draw the curtains, and Amelia sat write down and drew the curtains. It’s pretty cool that my newest book How to Drive Your Sister Crazy is similar to Amelia Bedelia in that they are both Level 2, I Can Read Books published by HarperCollins.


Here is a little more information about Diane Z. Shore:

After 9½ years, 385 rejections, and a forest of sloppy copies, teacher-turned-author Diane Z. Shore published her first picture book, BUS-A-SAURUS BOP, a rollicking, rhyming read-aloud, and winner of the 2004 Children’s Choice Award.
Now a full time author and read-aloud advocate, Diane writes in a variety of genres and her books have been translated into many languages. Her books include LOOK BOTH WAYS, ROSA LOVES TO READ, THIS IS THE DREAM (Civil Rights Movement), THIS IS THE FEAST (Thanksgiving), and the forthcoming THIS IS THE GAME (Baseball), plus her new beginning reader, HOW TO DRIVE YOUR SISTER CRAZY, a HarperCollins I Can Read!™ inspired by and written especially for reluctant readers.
Diane travels across the US with her lively “A-Rockin’ and A’Readin’ school presentations inspiring thousands of kids to read! Visit her website at http://www.dianezshore.com/


I hope that you enjoyed this blog book tour.