The TeachingBooks Blog
Each month we feature free and fun book contests and giveaways. We hope you will enjoy the following opportunities as well as the author and book resources available via TeachingBooks.net.
When I’m asked how I came to illustrate Patricia Hruby Powell’s Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker (Chronicle Books 2014), my most direct answer is that my agent Steven Malk shared the manuscript with me, after being approached by editors at Chronicle. The more magical response would be that Josephine Baker’s life was an inspiration to me long before I read Powell’s text. 
Forty years ago, when I was a young writer, and enjoying some success with my first novel, La Guerre, Yes Sir! (Éditions du jour, 1968), I was invited to write a story for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). I wanted to write about the moment that I felt, for the very first time, that I was my own person—not my mother’s son, not my father’s son—but me, petit Roch.
The reason I write about sports, women's history, and women's sports history, is that I grew up loving sports. I graduated from high school the week before Title IX was passed, so I didn't have opportunities to play in school, like girls do today. I played at camp, on the street, and with my father and my brother.
