I’ve been writing and illustrating children's books for over a decade now. Wow, how time flies! But people are often surprised to hear that I came to this profession unexpectedly. Just like Scaredy Squirrel (Kids Can, 2006), who jumps out of his nut tree into the unknown, I leapt into the world of children’s books. It all started with an art project and a teacher who sent my Leon the Chameleon (Kids Can, 2001) mock-up to a publisher.
The art of writing presents challenges for even the most experienced authors. My biggest struggle in writing the YA novel The Blood Lie (Cinco Puntos, 2011) revolved around voice. This book is based on a real hate crime that happened in my hometown in the 1920s. I really wanted to give the characters authentic Jazz Age voices, and I was committed to narrating the complex events in a credible, coherent way. It wasn’t easy!
My new historical fiction novel, My Brother's Shadow (FSG, 2011), is set in 1918 in Berlin during the last months of World War One. The book explores how war and the political transition following WWI impacted regular people and children in particular.
No Ordinary Day (Groundwood, 2011) is an uplifting, even joyful story—something you might not expect from a book about leprosy, an age-old disease that has disfigured millions and terrified billions.
An interactive whiteboard is a fabulous classroom tool that brings multimedia to the forefront of literacy and library lessons. By shifting the instructional focus from a teacher presentation to classroom-wide engagement, a whiteboard encourages participation and discussion while supporting kinesthetic learners.
I'm a writer because I never had the Creative Writing Class. You know the one I mean, the one that exhorts, "Write what you know. Write from your own experience." If I'd been limited to writing what I know, I'd have produced in these past forty years one unpublishable haiku.