Nick’s Picks: Losses and Legacies
Last spring the children’s book community lost several beloved authors and illustrators, including the hugely talented Leo Dillon, Jean Craighead George, Ellen Levine, and Maurice Sendak. In honor of their memory and their many accomplishments, we offer video and audio…

Poetry forces me to be brief. All the facts and figures won’t fit in my verses, so I choose only those details that are most meaningful to me. My hope is that the uncrowded page will invite both reluctant and passionate readers.
I’d never written anything quite like Lies, Knives, and Girls in Red Dresses. It is, after all, a collection of fairy tales. And what’s a seventy-two year old man doing fooling around with fairy tales?
As a YA author, I’ve written from the perspective of a guardian angel, a were-opossum, and even a pesky human or two. But the “character” who was hardest to connect with was my own teen self.