Chasing Freedom: the Story Behind the Story

It all start­ed in Chi­na. Yes, you read that right. The ori­gins of my book about Har­ri­et Tub­man and Susan B. Antho­ny has every­thing to do with Chi­na. Let me explain. In 1988, I was asked to write a few mono­logues for the­ater pieces on Amer­i­can His­to­ry that would be per­formed in a series of theaters […]

To Blurb or Not to Blurb

I love a good read. As for a free book, that gets me sali­vat­ing as quick­ly as the offer of dark choco­late. Well, almost! So when a pub­lish­er sends me a book to blurb, my ini­tial response is ela­tion. After all, a new book promis­es the poten­tial of a new lit­er­ary adven­ture. Or it may […]

The Writing Process Blog Tour

Have you ever been on a blog tour? This is my first time being part of one. Blame Chil­dren’s Poet Lau­re­ate, Kenn Nes­bitt. He’s the one who roped me into this! Seri­ous­ly, though, I’m hap­py to join the My Writ­ing Process Blog Tour. I hope you can take some­thing mean­ing­ful from my respons­es to the […]

Halfway to Perfect

The notion of phys­i­cal per­fec­tion is noth­ing new, despite the fact that no such thing exists. Most of us girls grew up on teen mag­a­zines that spoon-fed us the idea of striv­ing for body types they told us were beau­ti­ful, desir­able, “per­fect.” What has this led to? In case you haven’t noticed, the obese among […]

Welcome Precious

Where do ideas come from? It’s not always easy to say. Take Wel­come Pre­cious. One day, someone—I don’t remem­ber who—said “You should write a baby book.” I snick­ered. I had exact­ly zero inter­est in writ­ing anoth­er baby book. Years ear­li­er, I’d done one for Essence Mag­a­zine. That one was a work-for-hire, but still. Sure­ly one […]

Barack Obama

You know how I’m always say­ing I’m up for a chal­lenge? Well, with this book, God called me on it. Every­thing about this book was impos­si­ble. In 2008, I was going along, mind­ing my own busi­ness, writ­ing my books and sweat­ing the lat­est dead­line. I’d instruct­ed my agent to restrain her­self from offer­ing me any new […]

It’s Raining Laughter

If there’s such a thing as a back­wards approach to cre­at­ing a pic­ture book, I’m some­thing of an expert. On three sep­a­rate occa­sions, I’ve craft­ed books in pre­cise­ly that way. First, there was Some­thing On My Mind, with art by Tom Feel­ings. Next came From a Child’s Heart, with art by Bren­da Joy­smith. And last […]

Talkin’ about Bessie, Part II

Talkin’ About Bessie, my biog­ra­phy of avi­a­tor, Eliz­a­beth Cole­man, was an exer­cise in extreme patience and per­se­ver­ance. If you’ve read Part I of this blog post, you already know how tax­ing this project was from the start! The entire saga was a bit too long for one blog post, though, so I decid­ed to break […]

Talkin’ about Bessie, Part I

The Book that Almost Was­n’t: That could be the title of this book. The jour­ney from con­cept to book­shelves is a bit of a saga. Some books are hard­er to birth than oth­ers, and Bessie was a book-baby in breach! I’ll explain. It seems like for­ev­er ago that then Orchard edi­tor Melanie Kroupa asked me […]

When Gorilla Goes Walking

Godzil­la. That was the orig­i­nal name of my feline char­ac­ter. I chose the name because it expressed the size and feroc­i­ty of her per­son­al­i­ty. It was also a bit of a joke, of course, because she was very small and, well, kit­ten­ish. But don’t tell her that! As per­fect as her cho­sen name was, I had […]