Starting Over … Sort Of
This year—after more than 40 years as a fulltime writer of books for children—I feel the need to start over. What went wrong in my career? It’s a long list, I’m afraid
Hollins University
Big Green Textbook
My first inkling there was a thing called children’s literature came at a yard sale. I picked up a thick green textbook, Children’s Literature in the Elementary School, by Charlotte S. Huck. I marveled at the idea that people discussed and studied the books I loved and planned to write, that children’s books were literature, like Moby Dick.… more
Teaching Passion
When the director of Hollins University’s graduate program in children’s literature asked me to teach a critical class on the history of children’s book illustrators, I said no. Even with an MFA in writing for children from Vermont College, an MA in children’s literature from Hollins, scores of published books, and years of teaching graduate-level creative classes, I still felt like a fraud.… more
Tonight is the Night …
… when dead leaves fly like witches on switches across the sky …
In the center of our Wegman’s is all the stuff that is not food. Of course, I head there first. Browsing tea towels and sunflower coasters is my reward from having to shop in the too-big grocery store.
Recently I found a plate among the Halloween décor.… more