When I was a kid, I was obsessed with stuffed animals. I had 40 or 50 of them, enough to sag a bookshelf. They didn’t quite have distinct personalities, but in my mind Mrs. Lion, Mr. Hawk, and Princess Panther were brimming with life.
Archive | Author Blog Posts
Each month, we ask one distinguished author or illustrator to write an original post that reveals insights about their process and craft.
Guest Blogger: Terry Lynn Johnson
My experiences have not made me afraid to go into the bush. They have taught me valuable lessons. They have given me an appreciation of my capabilities—and kept me in awe of nature.
Guest Blogger: Jason Reynolds
I’d take it all in, digesting these words, this language, these codes and sounds sloshing around in my head, mixing with the language of my older brother and what I’d hear him saying outside with his friends, also a language all their own.
Guest Blogger: Susan Verde
The books I read as a child made me feel that whatever I was going through was OK because someone, some character or storyteller, understood what I was experiencing and I wasn’t alone.
Guest Blogger: Karina Yan Glaser
I come from a small family and grew up in the suburbs of California. So what inspired me to write about a family and a setting so different from my own upbringing?
Guest Blogger: Tonya Bolden
The answer to what happened at Ebenezer Creek during General William Tecumseh Sherman’s historic March to the Sea in 1864 sent me reeling, had me weeping inside.
Guest Blogger: Alan Gratz
If I could have nameless, faceless avatars running around making my plots function, my work would be a lot easier. But no one wants to read that story—including me. Readers want characters that have lives off the page. Characters that feel like friends, or enemies. Characters to root for, and root against. Characters that are […]
Guest Blogger: Ruth Behar
As I listened to Ruthie, I discovered the magic of yielding to a story. Memory and fiction became my wings. At times I wrote about things that I thought I’d made up and was surprised when I learned that they were actually true.
Guest Blogger: Rita Williams-Garcia
Like my mother, I’ve become a collector of objects, especially while I’m writing. As I begin a new project, I gather items that tell me about the subjects or reveal setting, plot, or most importantly, the characters.
Guest Blogger: Laurie Keller
When kids ask me where I get my ideas I often say I buy them at the Dollar Store. They generally don’t find this response particularly funny, yet it doesn’t stop me from saying it time and again.