Behind the Book
This book didn't start as a book. It started as a poem. I had written a oem about a mouse up in the attic making noise in the winter. This was the result of my children asking me, when they were much, much younger, what that noise was and, when I said it was probably a mouse in the attic, asking me how the little thing kept warm. Well, I told them, I imagine there is an old quilt up there, wadded up in a corner, and he scampers in and out of it all night. And the poem sat.

But then, while reading an SCBW (before the I was added to SCBWI) newsletter, I saw a call for poetry (and as writers know, publishers don't exactly beg for poetry) by Boyds Mills Press, a division of Highlights. They had started a new imprint called Wordsong, an imprint just for poetry books. I was elated. They asked for collections of holiday, bedtime, or animal books. So I got out my poem, lit a fire in the fireplace, got out pencil and paper (way before I had a computer) and my books from the library, and got to work on a collection. The rest is history, as they say.