Behind 

A Long Way

A Long Way started out as a true story.  On a June day many years ago I traveled with my two young daughters to New York City.  We met my mother there, in Grand Central Station and toured New York together.  

In one day, the girls and I traveled on six different types of transportation:  car, plane, bus, subway, ferryboat, train.  And of course in between all those we used our feet.  That’s how the story started, but it’s not how it ended up.

Tricia Tusa is a marvelous illustrator and when the editors at Candlewick suggested her for my book I was really excited.  In her hands, A Long Way became a different sort of journey, one that takes place in a big brown box and in the imagination of a whimsical, energetic little girl. 

The grandmother, too, is pretty wild.  When I shared the book with students in the first grade class where my older daughter is the teacher, one child asked, “Is Mrs. Z’s grandma as silly as this grandma?”  My daughter, Mrs. Z, said, “She's silly but not quite that silly.”  Good thing nobody asked if Mrs. Z’s mother (the author) was that silly.

The timing is unusual too.  The book was published in 2003, exactly 20 years after the trip that inspired it.  While the words reflect the experiences of my daughters, two little girls who are now grownups, Tricia Tusa’s pictures remind me of the creative personality of my granddaughter who is just the sort to grab tape and scissors and get to work.