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Up Down and Around

When I was a child, I loved stories.  So I made up tall tales and whoppers, and told these stories as if they were true.  Sometimes I explained that the stories were pretend.  Sometimes I didn’t.  Oops!

While I loved stories, I didn’t like my veggies—not a bit.  I liked corn on the cob, potatoes, and tomatoes but in my opinion, all the rest could just sit in their dishes forever.  Or they could stay in the cans or in the freezer or in the garden, so I wouldn’t have to look at them, or smell them, or get in trouble for not eating them. 

Growing up is funny.  Some things change and some things stay the same.  I still love stories; I read books and books every week.  But now I like vegetables too.  I like them so much I’ve written a magazine story about sugar peas and another about roots and stems and leaves.  UP DOWN and AROUND is new a book.  And yes, I now like every vegetable in the book, including okra!
Some of my favorite pictures from the book are near the beginning when the dirt piles up and the water splashes around.  When I was small, I spent lots of time outdoors and loved to play in the dirt—digging in the sandbox, building roads in the dirt, making stick and stone dams in the tiny creek in the back yard.  Even better than dirt by itself, was dirt plus water.  Mud!  I still spend time digging in the dirt.  These days I call it gardening.  But there’s something about feeling warm, crumbly dirt in my hands that makes me feel calm and busy and happy, all at the same time. 

When I visit schools, children often ask if I wanted to be a writer when I was a child.  The answer is no.  I wanted to be a kid.  I didn’t imagine myself as a grown-up.  Couldn’t think about giving up the fun of running up and down hills with my dog, finding stones, swinging my baseball bat, climbing trees, digging and mucking about.  Perhaps that’s why I enjoy writing books for children so much—it’s another kind of playing—playing with words.  And it allows me to keep childhood alive in my mind.