My daughter got married about a year and a half ago and so for their reception, I wrote her and her new husband a poem and read it at their reception and it was wildly successful. Then one day, when they got back from their travels and the dust settled, my daughter said ‘Mom, you should write a children’s book’. At the same time, I had been noodling around with a poem that I was coming up with for the two girls that were the flower girls at her wedding, whose names happened to be Charlotte and Penelope and they were sisters. They were two and four at the time and they didn’t know me at the time but they were so cute, and their names were so lyrical and so I was playing around with a poem that I was going to do and give to them at Christmas or something. Then something told me ‘Don’t give it away yet and to hang onto it’. I found a publisher who said ‘Yeah, we’ll take a chance on it’ and the rest is history.
LB: Did you have a favorite book or author as a child?
TA:
I don’t recall doing a lot of pleasure reading until I was completely out of school and then got back into reading. Now I love Barbra Kingsolver and Isabel Allende. As a child, I also remember learning some of the poems of Ogden Nash and then going back in later years and realizing his genius with words and word play and it’s humorous in two different ways, for both the child and adult. That’s who I’m trying to emulate with my work the most. I wanted to write a book that I would have enjoyed reading to my kids.
LB: What age range do you feel your book is best suited for?
TA:
I think that the suitability is like kindergarten through third grade, so that’s roughly 5 through 8. I have seen younger ones be fascinated with the illustrations. That’s all on Dan. He’s a genius. I think it will take teachers in grades around 3 or 4 to introduce it to their students because some of the vocabulary in there is not first-grade material and I think a teacher could do all sorts of things with it and so I hope.
Dan McGeehan is the illustrator of Charlotte and Penelope and Their Magical Menagerie. You may explore more of Dan’s artwork at:
https://childrensillustrators.com/DanMcGeehan/about
LB: What is one tip you would share with parents who may be struggling to get their children to enjoy reading?
TA:
Teach the kids that you don’t need something moving on a screen to have great experiences. There’s something magical about sitting with an adult and turning the page together. As far as getting them into it, I think just reading aloud to your child, but not just at bedtime. Get them interested in the worlds that a book and other books can take them to. Help them to embody the story and ask them questions to make them part of the story so it’s not just words on a page.
LB:
Do you plan on writing more children’s books?
TA:
Yes, my dream is for this to become a series of books and so book number two is with the illustrator and I am starting to think about what book number three is going to be.
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Lioness Books would like to give one lucky winner an autographed copy of Charlotte and Penelope and Their Magical Menagerie! To enter the giveaway, all you need to do is fill out the entry form below.
Winner will be drawn on September 15th, 2024.
